


Pure Imagination

by Lightning_Skies



Category: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - All Media Types, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, References to Aztec human sacrifice, Scene of a cannibalistic ritual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2018-03-13 16:29:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3388505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lightning_Skies/pseuds/Lightning_Skies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On that tragic day, the brightly colored smoke floating over the sleepy little town of Beacon Hills turned black and the smell of spun sugar and melted caramel scorched and lay bitter on the back of the tongue. The Hale’s Candy Castle was on fire. The fire department answered the call, but suddenly the moat, which had seemed to be nothing more than a quaint landscaping feature proved itself tactically insurmountable and the quirky drawbridge was out of reach. By the time the emergency responders had figured out how to get themselves and their equipment to the castle, the fire had burned itself out, the Hale family was gone and Hale’s Handmade Halloween Candy Factory had to be closed.</p><p>But this isn’t a story of how the Candy Castle used to be. This is a story of what it became.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Golden Tickets

**Author's Note:**

> I have been promising to write this fic since May 2013 when I was goofing around and created [this picture of Wonka!Derek](http://monitorzombie.tumblr.com/image/69225831860) and started using it as an icon. 
> 
> Here we are, nearly two years later and I'm finally following through.
> 
> My artist ComatoseBadger is an art goddess and made the incredible art for the fic. [Go love her!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3385568)

 

 

Once upon a time… - _Because, of course, that's how stories like this should always start, dear reader. Now, where was I?_ -

- _Ah, yes._ -

Once upon a time, somewhere or another in Northern California - _I can't be bothered to remember exactly where_ \- there was a little town called Beacon Hills.

Now, Beacon Hills wasn't one of those big glistening cities full of pinned and tucked starlets like Los Angeles and it didn't have beautiful beaches like Malibu where you could lay in the sun drinking a very unsatisfying kale and spinach smoothie in the hopes of keeping your figure ‘beach fit’. Beacon Hills was full of boring little people, living boring little lives. The only interesting thing about Beacon Hills was that the little town was the location of a candy factory. It was not just any simple candy factory either; it was the biggest and most famous candy factory in the world. Beacon Hill's only claim to fame was that it was the officially-unofficial world capital of Halloween candy.

_-Now, you may ask me how exactly THAT came about and if you could just shut up for a moment, I would tell you.-_

-Ahem.-

As I was saying, the most interesting thing about Beacon Hills was its unique claim to holiday fame but the most interesting thing in Beacon Hills was the castle. It wasn’t a real castle, this being suburban California, but it was painstakingly shaped as one right out of the pages of a horror novel, with towering, lopsided turrets, long ramparts with jagged crenelation, imposing battlements and an intimidating, creepy looking keep. The castle was built on the very peak of the tallest of the hills that gave the town its name and on clear nights its lights could be seen from the town below.

On dark and stormy nights however, when everything was a little more sinister in the dripping darkness, no one really wanted to see the castle looming up there and so ignored it completely for their own peace of mind. The not-castle had a purpose, it wasn't merely a decorative oddity, there was an actual reason it was designed to look so scary. It was a chocolate factory. Hale’s Handmade Halloween Candy Factory to be specific. Run, obviously, by the Hale family.

Now, being the foremost of all the Halloween candy manufacturers in the whole wide world, Hale’s was the very _creme de la creme_ and did a brisk business year round despite their holiday theme. Boys and girls of every age loved to have a good scare after all. No one had ever bothered to try and tell horror movie directors that they could only release their films once a year, so no one told Hale’s to stop producing their wonderful creations come November 1st, and they didn’t. Three hundred and sixty five and a quarter days a year that castle worked, puffing out brightly colored smoke that changed colors with the holidays of the year.  
  
'You haven’t lived', declared Beacon Hills' townsfolk proudly, 'until you’ve seen the absolute spectacle of a horrible, haunted-looking old castle merrily puffing out egg shaped plumes of pastel colored smoke for Easter.'

The Hale’s only real competitor was Argent’s Silver Sweets, a French company that was focused on Christmas candies. The third and fourth best candy manufacturers in the world were greatly outmatched and didn’t even bother to try and keep up with the Hale/Argent feud. When the Hales released their Squelchy Snorters the Argents countered with a new series of Spearmint Ornaments, when the Hales created Fizzing-Whizzbies the Argents announced Edible Ribbon. The Argents and the Hales were the Hatfields and the McCoys of the candy world. No one knew exactly how long they had been trying to do each other in, but it was understood that if you were going to be in the candy business you had to pick a side.

While the Hales produced scary candies with a wild disregard for the season, the Argents claimed larger and larger portions of the calendar in the name of Christmas. They had been expanding their holiday season aggressively in the last few decades, absorbing Thanksgiving easily and having no major holiday candy competition until Valentine’s Day. The Hallmark Company had a desperate death-grip on February 14th and a wild look in their eyes that scared even the Argents away. They grew and grew until one day the only thing standing between the Argents and summer sales was Halloween, and the Hales.

The members of the Hale family were just as mysterious and mystifying as their hilltop factory. People tried to steal their secrets, but the only personnel the factory employed worked in packing and shipping. All of the inventing, all of the secret recipes stayed in Hale hands and were the most classified, mysterious, obscure, private, hush-hush, secluded secrets in the world. So, Beacon Hills was famous for two things, Halloween and Secrets.

The Hale family was so large they were able to run all of the unseen parts of the factory by themselves without any outside help. They were beautiful, forbidding creatures the Beacon Hills townsfolk all agreed, just like their castle. A strange bunch, they kept to themselves for the most part and rarely descended into town. They weren’t snobbish, it was discussed and decided, because despite their international renown, they were always unfailingly polite. Still, there was no one in Beacon Hills that could have claimed to be a friend to a Hale. No one even knew exactly how many of them there were. They, like their factory, were an accepted oddity of the town, but couldn’t ever really be called a part of it, always lingering on the outskirts. Until, one day, quite unexpectedly, they weren’t.

On that tragic day, the brightly colored smoke floating over the sleepy little town of Beacon Hills turned black and the smell of spun sugar and melted caramel scorched and lay bitter on the back of the tongue. The Hale’s Candy Castle was on fire. The fire department answered the call, but suddenly the moat, which had seemed to be nothing more than a quaint landscaping feature proved itself tactically insurmountable and the quirky drawbridge was out of reach. By the time the emergency responders had figured out how to get themselves and their equipment to the castle, the fire had burned itself out, the Hale family was gone and Hale’s Handmade Halloween Candy Factory had to be closed.

But this isn’t a story of how the Candy Castle used to be. This is a story of what it became.

Years passed, and the factory mouldered forbiddingly up on its hill, glaring down at Beacon Hills. The once humorous inside jokes about how it looked like a haunted castle became covert whispers that now it truly might be just as haunted as it looked. The Hales, it was said, never had a chance. None of them made it out and without any structural blueprints to work with, the castle was deemed too dangerous for the small town’s untrained volunteer search crews to enter in order to find their bodies. They had lived alone up in their castle and now they had been left to rot with it. Strange noises could be heard from the hill if the wind shifted just right, howling around the turrets and making the wood groan. Things that would give you a shiver and make you hurry on your way just a little bit faster if you heard them. The phantom smells of chocolate and sugar still settled low in the valley some mornings, like a fog of nostalgia.

The foolish teens of Beacon Hills made it a point to goad each other into taking trips up the hill. They dared one another to spend a night camping on the edge of the moat or felt courageous when a large group of them swam in the water in the safe, bright sunshine of the summer. When years of dares passed and nothing happened, they grew more and more confident and began to go farther for their thrills. Swimming across the moat and slapping a wet hand against the factory’s outer wall before retreating to safety was the new mark of honor. The adults of Beacon Hills, for the most part, ignored these little rites of passage the teens concocted and pretended that they had never been as young and foolish as to accept a dare. Poor little Matty Daehler was the one blamed and ostracized by the entire adolescent population of Beacon Hills when everything changed. He had been bullied by the high school swim team into trying to cross the moat in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, he wasn’t a very strong swimmer and fear got the better of him halfway across. He nearly drowned as he called for help. Once he was retrieved, shivering and coughing, it was the last straw and the factory was declared off limits. The Sheriff set up a patrol schedule to keep it that way.

 

…and the factory sat, more alone than ever.

 

So it was that no one was around to notice when the glass in the shattered windows was slowly replaced pane by pane, the crumbled northern turret was rebuilt brick by brick and the collapsed bits of roof were patched one at a time. The repairs were so slow and minimal that had anyone been in a visiting mood they likely wouldn’t have noticed anyhow. Once the necessary structural repairs were done, the main chimney gave a ponderous huff of thin, colorless steam, as if testing to see if anyone was paying attention. When there was no reaction it puffed a little harder, chugging slowly to life again, but kept its smoke subtle, easily dismissed colors. Dim lights flickered deep within the castle, hidden away, far from the exposed windows and never strong enough to be seen from town. The smell of hazelnut and vanilla crept down the hill with such stealth that no one commented, thinking it to be sense memory.

It even went unremarked when the first purple and green packages began to appear at the very edge of the candy shelf, slowly metastasizing and choking out other brands, jostling at austere silver packaging and regaining prominence as time went by. Children, after all, were young enough that their short memories had forgotten the magic of Hale’s candy. To them it was a fabulous new candy and busy adults were set enough in their ways to simply grab old favorites without considering the fact that they shouldn’t have been available. Hale’s Homemade Halloween Candies crept back into public consumption with nary a ripple of reaction.

Then came The Announcement.

* * *

**HALES OFFICIAL RE-OPENING!** The headlines shouted. _Hale’s Handmade Halloween Candy Factory will reopen its doors for the first time in nearly a decade. In true horror movie villain fashion the once great Candy Castle has returned to life to put the fear of sugar into another generation of candy lovers. Don’t look now, but all of your favorite Scrumdiddlyumptious Hale Bars have loomed their ways onto the shelves right behind you while your back was turned, Candied Corn is sprouting up everywhere and grocery stores have a Sugar Bone or two to pick with you. With Hale’s back on the shelves and the brand going strong once again we are delighted to announce that there will be a Grand Factory Re-Opening complete with a factory tour for a half dozen lucky young men and women. This is the prize of your fondest nightmares children, because no one but the Hale family has ever seen the inside of the Candy Castle and it has undoubtedly been completely remodeled since the tragic fire. (Details on Page A7)_

Stiles gaped at his phone in awe as he saw the article posted to his Facebook wall. “Oh. My. GOD!” He crowed in delight, stumbling down the stairs waving his phone like a banner. “DAD! Check this out. They’re re-opening Hale’s. No more late nights kicking delinquents off the property!”

“Stiles,” Came the long suffering response as his Dad squinted at him in disbelief over the top of his coffee mug. “Nine times out of ten it’s you or your friends I’m kicking out.”

“Well, apparently you no longer have that right, Sheriff.” He grinned widely at his Dad. “Now someone else will have to kick me out. Assuming I can’t get in on that tour, because DUDE, that’d be Awe~some!”

“I have every faith you’ll find a way to cheat the system, _dude_.” His Dad had long since given up on trying to make him stop using the moniker, but still mocked him for it on occasion. “You’ve been obsessed with that factory for as long as I can remember.”

“Creepy, probably haunted, castle-slash-castle themed candy factory bursting with undiscovered trade secrets… with a tragic and mysterious backstory… that could possibly still be full of unsold candy and the never recovered dead bodies of the strange hermetic and supernaturally attractive family that once lived and worked in the factory? What’s not to love? I am literally giddy as a kid in a scary candy factory about this.”

“I think you’re the only kid on the planet that would be giddy about a scary factory.”

“The internet tells me you speak lies, lawman.” Stiles tapped at his phone, rapidly searching through a stream of articles. “This has gone viral, it’s trending, ‘hales’ and ‘goldenticket’ hashtags everywhere. Beacon Hills is the talk of the world right now. Our little town, all grown up and sugar rushing the universe. Brings a tear to my eye.” He sniffled and wiped away a fake tear.

“I don’t understand half of the words that come out of your mouth.” The Sheriff mused rubbing at his forehead and watching Stiles like he was a previously undiscovered species with an unknown threat level.

“That’s because you’re a complete luddite. You need to live in the moment. Embrace the information age.”

The Sheriff huffed in amusement, “Cry about fictional characters, rage at writers and directors, burn my restrictive patriarchy enforced grammar bra and join an insular hippy commune on Tumblr?”

“Hipster, not hippy.” Stiles corrected, thumbs flying across his touchscreen. “Something like that. Hey, at least you know what Tumblr is now.”

“I know just enough to be afraid.”

“That’s all you really need to know.” Stiles nodded sagely, “The internet is a scary place.”

“Yet, I somehow continue to pay a monthly bill to allow you unrestricted access.” The older Stilinski mused ruefully.

“Damn skippy. The damage is done at this point.”

“Well, if you do manage to weasel your way into the factory, please remember that it’s already been burned down once and doesn’t need your special brand of trouble.” The Sheriff put his mug in the sink and grabbed the cruiser’s keys.

“I would never.” Stiles reeled back in exaggerated shock, hand pressed to his chest in a classic ‘who me?’ pose.

“Of course not,” His Dad replied, “It must have been some other Stiles that thought it was a good idea to challenge his friends to a duel with weed whackers last summer.”

“I have never met this kid but he sounds like a brilliant and innovative thinker.”

“Budding criminal mastermind is more like it and he’s not much for follow through or damage control. I’m constantly surprised he still has all of his limbs.”

“We mustn’t attempt to hinder the great minds of the next generation with our nay-saying pessimism.”

“He can be as brilliant as he likes, just so long as I’m not posthumously awarded a Darwin Award in his name.”

“Most parents would be proud to receive such a prestigious award!” Stiles called after his Dad cheerfully, receiving only a backwards wave as the Sheriff climbed into his cruiser and headed to work.

Stiles looked down at his phone in contemplation. “Weasel my way in…” A truly evil smirk worked its way onto his face. He was going to need as many cases of Hale Bars as he could afford and several jars of rubber cement.

* * *

** FIRST GOLDEN TICKET FOUND! **

"The first Golden Ticket was discovered right here in London yesterday, viewers, by none other than Jackson Whittemore, son of prominent barrister, Kenneth Whittemore. Mr. Whittemore, if you could say a few words…" The British news anchor approached a pompous looking man in a bespoke suit who had his hand rested possessively on the muscular shoulder of an equally stuffy blonde teen.

“I just knew my Jackson could do it.” The well dressed man blustered proudly, “He’s captain of the rugby team at his public school and he bullied the whole lot into helping him search. I'm a member of the schoolboard you see and there was already money set aside to fund a Band Candy fundraiser for the music department. Candy is candy, I told the Headmaster, what does it really matter who gets it? He saw it my way almost immediately. The ol'Whittemore charm gets them every time."

"This will be the first time the public has seen one of the elusive Golden Tickets." The reporter reached out to try and touch the shiny paper, but Whittemore Jr moved it away with an ugly sneer.

Mr. Whittemore just laughed and jostled his son's shoulder, "Read it out, son."

 The snotty underwear model held up the Golden Ticket emblazoned with the Hale's logo and read out in a condescending voice. "Congratulations! This ticket entitles one young man or woman between the ages of 13 and 20, accompanied by a parent or guardian, entry into the Hale's Handmade Halloween Candy Factory on October the 31st, for a lock-in survival tour lasting from dusk until dawn. Guests will enter the castle at their own risk and a wondrous prize awaits any who survive the night." Jackson scoffed. "It's just a stupid haunted tour. I was really expecting better from such a famous company, but they seem to have let their level of quality drop since the fire. They had better make that prize worth my time."

“What an asshole!” Stiles scowled at the BBC news excerpt he was watching, angrily clicking out of the tab. That kid was rich, athletic, attractive and had the kind of luck that gave him a ticket less than 48 hours after the contest started. Stiles hated him. He glared at the case of chocolate bars he had spread out over his bed to dry. He had a scheme, and it was a perfect scheme, he just needed more time.

He had bought a case of Hale Bars, systematically opened all the chocolate bars with delicate precision, never ripping the paper wrapper or the foil inside and then carefully sealed them up again when he had confirmed that they didn’t have any tickets inside. He would use the Hale craze to sell these bars tomorrow at school and use the slight markup to fund his next batch, plus a tidy little profit on the side. It was perfect, but it wouldn’t work if all the tickets got snatched up by undeserving, rich jerkoffs who would never appreciate the Candy Castle tour for the grand adventure it really was. He had to win; his hometown pride was on the line.

* * *

** SECOND GOLDEN TICKET FOUND! **

"We now join the Martin family in their lovely home." The camera cut away to a mousey looking man standing with an elegant woman and a beautiful, disinterested teen.

A microphone entered the frame, as the reporter spoke off screen. "Now, I'm to understand that Lydia was able to mathematically calculate the location of the winning ticket?"

"We haven't been able to keep up with Lydia's intelligence since the third grade." Mrs. Martin said, simpering into the camera, "She never needed help on her homework, but I didn't realize she was solving problems on this level."

Lydia flicked her perfectly styled hair, "All it took was the proper application of sales statistics to dispersion pattern recognition algorithms while accounting for the influx of supply versus demand variables that would alter the competitive market values. I narrowed the package number to within a 0.8 bar margin of error, but everyone knows that the bars can shift in transit and I didn’t want to accidentally buy the wrong one, so we just bought the carton. In the end it was only a 15 hour drive down to the appropriate convenience store to pick it up."

"I don't even eat that much chocolate, I just wanted to prove I could find one of the tickets before the MIT think tank did. When I presented my findings, they wouldn't accept that they had been outdone by the math skills of a high school student. Naturally, I had to produce the ticket as proof of my algorithm's accuracy. It was a matter of inferior minds questioning my intellectual integrity and I couldn't allow that to stand."

“Wow.” Stiles paused the video and gazed dreamily at the second winner. She was gorgeous, with long flowing strawberry blonde hair, sparkling green eyes and creamy skin. She was so confident and intelligent and perfect in every way. He sighed in enchantment and nearly face-planted into his keyboard when the pile of Hale Bars his elbow was propped on cascaded to the floor.

* * *

** HALE TICKETS HALF GONE! **

' _The third ticket rests in the hands of Scott McCall, but it has an unusual story to tell. Scott's mother is a nurse at Union Hospital and he spends his free time volunteering to help the patients. Young Mr. McCall organized a community outreach program to collect donations of Hale Bars. 100% of his donations went to juvenile patients unable to go out and buy their own chocolate. It was a heartfelt effort to include them in the ‘Hale-tosis’ sweeping the world. Scott tirelessly traveled door to door in his hometown and collected several hundred bars from the generous donations of neighbors and friends. When asked why he had given up a chance to win, one neighbor was quoted as having said "Scott has so much faith in a person's inherent goodness. How could I stand there and tell him that my greed outweighed the happiness of a sick kid? I couldn't do it, so I donated a few bars. I guess I'm regretting that now."_

_'I'm sure much of the town has similar sentiments as Scott actually managed to talk someone into donating what turned out to be a Golden Ticket. The ticket was randomly distributed to a young 9 year old girl (her parents have requested that her name be withheld) with terminal leukemia. She was too weak to take advantage of the ticket and decided to give it to Scott, since he was the one who had gotten it for her. "She was just so happy." Her tearful mother told reporters. "There isn't much for us to be excited about or grateful for these days, but Scott gave my little girl the best gift anyone could have given her. I haven't seen her smile like that in a long time. We will never regret giving him the ticket, because he gave us something even more precious. He gave us one last truly happy day."_

“Jesus, how is he real?” Stiles muttered, reading the paper that he'd pulled right out of his father's hands, “This kid is an ACTUAL ray of sunshine. Steve Rogers eat your heart out.” A tiny, bald, little girl smiled out of the page, cuddled up to a mop haired teen with a lopsided jaw and goofy smile. Stiles couldn’t bring himself to hate the kid for lessening his chances and actually found himself wanting to meet him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the pseudo math that Lydia used. I don't know how someone would even begin to track down a specific chocolate bar so I just jammed together terms that sounded good.
> 
> If you want more up to date information about what I'm up to, or if you want to message me, I just set up a [Facebook page](https://www.facebook.com/Lightningskies) or you can always visit me on [my Tumblr](https://monitorzombie.tumblr.com)


	2. The Big Day

**ONLY TWO LEFT!**

"In tonight's leading story, I bring you the shocking news that the fourth of only six golden tickets has been found by none other than Allison Argent. You heard me right folks, the granddaughter of Gerard Argent, CEO of Argent’s Silver Sweets has just gained access to the Hale’s Handmade Halloween Candy Factory. This is the largest upset in candy history. After the tragic Hale fire the Argents reigned as candy royalty, their throne uncontested for years, but sales dropped with embarrassing speed once Hale’s resumed production and now the companies are battling head to head once more. Can Hale’s hold onto its success in the wake of an Argent, not just a representative but a full blooded Argent, walking the halls of their Candy Castle? Tune in later tonight as we bring in a panel of experts to debate the issue."

"Oh. My. God. This is better than a soap opera.” Stiles breathed to himself in disbelief. “I NEED to be there to see how this plays out.” He absent-mindedly brought the chocolate bar in his hand up to his mouth and took a big bite of paper, foil and fresh glue. He jerked back in shock and spit frantically, tongue hanging out as he scraped disgusting chemical paste off of it. He had been working all night, every night, since the announcement to strip and redress case after case of Hale Bars and every part of his desk was piled high with blocks of chocolate in various stages of wrapping.

* * *

**RACE FOR THE LAST TICKET!**

"I was supposed to be using the money t-to save for college." The curly haired boy admitted, his eyes shifting around without looking directly at his father or the reporter. He looked supremely uncomfortable to be in front of the camera, nervously tugging at the hem of his ratty t-shirt. "We don't have much a-and education is important."

"'Isaac,' I'm always telling him. 'A man needs to be able to make his own way.'" Mr. Lahey clapped his son on the shoulder, gripping him tight and shaking a little. He waved the ticket with his other hand, holding it as far away from the kid as he could. Isaac's eyes followed the ticket like a cat with a laser pointer, but he obviously didn't dare grab for it. "Don't spend money on useless things like candy and video games. I guess he thought he knew better than his old man. Kids these days just never listen. I'll be going with him of course, to keep an eye on him."

“If anyone needs a lifetime supply of chocolate it’s that guy.” Stiles mused, watching the twiggy bean sprout shake like a leaf. “He looks like he was just attacked by a dementor.” He narrowed his eyes at the news report as the kid flinched and drew into himself. Wow, his Dad kinda sucked for calling him on a mistake like that on live television. Jerk needed to unclench and live a little.

* * *

**IT’S ALL OVER!**

‘ _Reports are coming in that a young woman in Japan has found the last golden ticket, tune in at the 10s every hour for up to the minute coverage…_ ’

"Nooooooooooo!" Stiles cried dramatically, feeling his heart breaking in his chest. He rested his head on his keyboard in despair with a deep sigh. His eyes popped open, “’Reports.’ It’s not confirmed.” He ripped his phone out of his pocket and looked up Snopes and HoaxSlayer. “Please be wrong, please be wrong, please, please, please.” He kept his metaphorical fingers crossed as he searched ‘golden tickets’ and scanned down the page. His eyes scanned the text frantically.

“Yes!” He hopped out of his chair and dramatically punched the air in celebration. His chair rolled backwards and knocked over a stack of cardboard shipping crates on top of him and he crashed to the floor under a couple dozen pounds of chocolate. “Worth it.” He wheezed against the carpet.

"Stiles," He looked up to see his Dad leaning on his bedroom doorjamb, pinching the bridge of his nose in disbelief at the words about to come out of his mouth, "I just got off the phone with the school superintendent. Are you, or are you not, spending your afternoons dealing chocolate out of your trunk in the junior high parking lot like some kind of mafia wise guy?"

"Dealing is such a harsh word." Stiles hedged with a really terrible Jersey accent. "I prefer to think of it as providing a service, fulfilling a need, as it were."

"I thank god every day that you weren't born in an earlier era. Al Capone, you are not." His Dad squinted at his position on the ground in amusement, "Keep in mind that you are talking to an experienced and observant cop and you are currently pinned to the floor with several large, well labelled boxes of your 'product'."

"There may have been some transactions between friends."

"You don't HAVE any friends at the junior high."

"Nothing illegal is happening." Stiles protested, shoving at the boxes to unbury himself. He stacked them haphazardly in a dangerous lean and they immediately toppled over the other way, tumbling across his bed. "I bought them all fair and square, nothing fell off the back of a truck or anything. They just buy more, since the high-schoolers all have cars and credit cards and can get their own."

"You're teaching them to literally take candy from strangers." The Sheriff scolded in a disappointed tone, "I know you really want a Golden Ticket, but this isn't the way to go about it. This kind of thing?" he gestured to the open candy on the desk and the bottle of glue. "This is exactly what I give a school speech on every fall at the elementary school; the risk of candy that has been tampered with."

"I… hadn't thought of that." Stiles admitted, his defensive stance deflated and he sank into his rolling chair and chewed on his lip. "I didn't mean any harm."

His Dad came over to hug him and scrub at his hair comfortingly. "I know kid. You just act without thinking sometimes."

"Thanks, Dad." He mumbled into his father's chest. "M'sorry."

"It's okay, but I'm still shutting down your whole operation and taking a cut, Mr. Wiseguy." The Sheriff grabbed a Hale Bar from the open box on the desk and waved the purple and green package in Stiles' face, ignoring the indignant choking noises emitting from his objecting son. "The first rule of the mafia is greasing the pigs with bribes so's ya don't get pinched."

Stiles' face twisted up in disgust at his Dad's terrible imitation. "You are SO not cool. I vote you should never try that accent again."

"Agreed." His dad said easily, "So long as you never try this again." He gestured to the boxes stacked on every surface of Stiles' room.

"What am I going to DO with them all." Stiles whined.

"Not my department." The Sheriff replied easily as he left. "Though if you need help eating them, you know where to find me."

"Never gonna happen." Stiles shut his door firmly, putting a barrier up between his dad and the illicit treats.

* * *

The Sheriff sat down at his desk to start his paperwork and peeled open the end of the chocolate bar, he deserved a little reward for continuing to take Stiles insanity in stride. He wouldn't eat the whole thing, because God only knew when he'd get another one past his son, but he couldn't deny himself a nibble, the first in a very long time. He broke off a tiny piece of the bar and let it slowly melt on his tongue as he started working on his reports. Hale's chocolate truly had no match. Like father, like son, he mused. Stilinski's were choco-holics through and through.

He worked and nibbled, worked and nibbled some more, until he had eaten the exposed bits and had to unwrap the bar a little farther. Just a bit more wouldn't hurt. Stilinski's were also known for the way they always went a bit too far with everything they did. His eyes widened as his fingers pried the foil back a little farther, exposing an edge of gold. He tore the packaging wide open and stared down at the Golden Ticket in his hand, quickly folding the foil back down to hide it away in surprise. He couldn't hold back a disbelieving snort. The very ticket his son had been desperately peddling candy to children to find was in the ONE chocolate bar he had relinquished. The sheriff folded his hand over his mouth to muffle the hysterical laughter that was threatening to bubble out of him.

Stiles would be completely dumbfounded. He couldn't wait to see the look on his son's face. It would be absolutely priceless. He'd finally gotten one over on his son.

* * *

The sun rose on October the 31st mostly unremarked, but when it fell, the entire state population of California was crowded up against the edges of the Candy Castle's moat with the six ticket holders front and center. The Castle's chimney was chugging away, alternating bursts of trademarked Hale green and purple smoke.

Just as the last sliver of sun disappeared behind the castle, the drawbridge creaked and lowered itself down with the clanking and rattling of rusted chains. It thumped to the ground at the feet of the winners and they all stared down at it dubiously. The wood looked weak and rotted and not at all safe, despite the thick bands of metal holding the boards together. Jackson was the first one to work up the bravado to stride across the bridge, his nose held in the air as he refused to look weak in front of the gathered crowd. Mr. Whittemore hesitated for a moment as he heard the creaking spawned by his son's steps, but he donned his stereotypical stiff British lip and minced gingerly after his son. Lydia was next as she shrewdly calculated the load bearing capacity of the bridge and found it acceptable. The others trailed after her one by one and they congregated in front of the outer portcullis at the end of the bridge.

"Outer portcullis to keep people out, inner portcullis to trap invaders under the murder holes if they breach the outer." Stiles grabbed onto the iron gate and peered up under the wall. "Man, they went all out on the architecture. Very realistic."

"Murder holes?" Stiles jumped as Isaac Lahey spoke up right next to him. Kid was silent as a ninja.

"See those openings in the roof? They lead to the top of the wall and in the medieval days guards'd pour boiling water, acid or oil down on attackers from there."

"That's horrible." Stiles leaned back to see Scott McCall on the other side of Isaac looking like a kicked puppy as he stared up at the ceiling.

"Medieval warfare wasn't a pillowfight, dude." Stiles elaborated with glee, murder and mayhem was a passion of his. "It was gnarly stuff. Blood and guts and not enough medical care."

"I don't know why you're surprised," Lydia Martin interjected tossing her hair with distain. "The outer curtain walls had clearly visible machicolation between the corbel of the battlement… and they didn't use oil, it was too valuable a commodity to be wasted on enemies, especially during a siege."

Stiles stared at her in complete infatuation and chose to ignore his Dad's quiet ‘Oh, god. Here we go.’ from behind him. "You." He declared, "Are a Goddess amongst men."

She scrutinized him for a second before dismissing him and giving Isaac and Scott each the same critical once over. "Obviously." She flounced over to where Jackson was standing with his father, far enough away not to be associated with any of them.

Allison Argent spoke up from where she was standing on Stiles' other side with a musical accent. "This castle's architecture seems to be based in the early 12th century. Porte coulissant have been used since the middle ages but widespread use of meurtrière- um, you would say arrow slits?- wasn't until about then, but as we advanced into the 13th century it became much more common to see concentric castles than this stone keep style. It was much more tactically sound and allowed trained archers to pick off anyone stuck between the walls, rather than just drop things on them and hope for the best."

Stiles made a face, mouthing 'concentric castles' mockingly. He was used to being the smart and knowledgeable one. His friends back home were in awe of his tidbits of information and could never match him. He looked back at Scott and Isaac but they were both watching Allison with adoration, he had lost his audience. He crossed his arms with a huff.

"Look something's happening." Scott thrust his arm through the bars of the portcullis and pointed up at the castle across the courtyard. The tall iron doors of the factory creaked open by themselves with a long drawn out groan of protest.

"Wow, they are really playing up the horror movie vibe." Stiles mused. Noticing how pale Scott had gotten he laughed and clapped him on the back. "Don't worry, Scotty, I'll protect you from the big bad factory."

"I'm not afraid." Isaac piped up in a wavering voice, quickly side-eying his father who nodded at him in the most negligent approval Stiles had ever seen. "Only little kids are scared by stupid stuff like this."

"They're probably mechanized." Lydia was unimpressed. "Sliding and revolving doors are commonplace. I doubt you consider the local grocery store haunted when its doors open for you."

"It's no fun if you're not scared." Stiles declared, "Gives you a thrill."

"Whoo." Jackson intoned flatly. "Standing outside waiting for something to happen is SO thrilling."

Allison frowned at Jackson, "The doors opening is something happening."

As if taking Jackson up on his challenge to be exciting, a long roll of purple and green checkered carpet bounced down the stairs of the castle and unwound in their direction. They all watched its progress, riveted by how neat and straight it was unrolling, not a bump to be found. Eventually, the end of the carpet flopped to a halt in front of the inner portcullis and the outer one raised for them to enter. Between the gates was a set of golden pedestals with six large throw switches like Stiles had seen in old Frankenstein movies.

They advanced as a group and found that each switch had a place to insert their tickets. Again, Jackson moved to go first, but Lydia beat him to it. She inserted her Golden Ticket under the first switch and threw the toggle. Sparks began to emit from the gate in front of them. One by one they gave up their tickets and flipped their switches, sparks of different colors emitting from the gate with each one. Stiles noticed that whereas Lydia's ticket was pristine, Jackson's was carelessly wrinkled and he had to smooth it carefully before the machine would accept it. He glared balefully at Stiles when he snickered after it was refused for a third time.

Scott's ticket had slight wear marks across it where he had folded it down to fit it in his pocket, but the ticket had obviously been treated well and carried around lovingly on his person since he'd been given it. Isaac was pale and a little shaky but seemed relieved when his father begrudgingly handed him his ticket. His fingers traced over the ticket reverently and he clutched at it for a long moment. He seemed reluctant to part with it again now that it was in his hands. The slightly smudged ticket wasn't rejected, even though he'd accidentally put it in upside-down. Allison's ticket wasn't as perfect as Lydia's but only had slight wrinkles, much like Stiles' own.

Once all the switches had been flipped the gate behind them crashed down, just missing skewering Allison's aunt by a hair as she jumped out of the way with surprising agility. The gate in front of them slowly rose and they filtered into the courtyard as the drawbridge cranked closed behind them, cutting off the view of the disappointed crowd. They crossed the silent courtyard with the Candy Castle looming above them. When they entered the enormous arched doorway the group found themselves in a great hall. It stretched out in front of them, adorned with huge banners hanging from the ceiling. The banners were all in various shades and tones of purple and green and shaped like all of the package designs the Hale company had used over the years. The closest banners depicted the original design. They had slightly blurry, hand printed and inked images on what looked like burlap and then on down through the eras as the hall went on. The first few rows had no color, but then green and purple dominated. The farthest banners had a crisp shiny foil look with a slight holographic effect as they swayed in the slight breeze from the door.

The floor was patterned with patterns of a dark eggplant purple and hunter green but the carpet of lime green and royal purple ran down the center like a brightly lit path. The moment they were all inside, the giant doors slammed behind them with surprising speed and strength, the bang reverberating through the great hall and making everyone jump. Mr. Whittemore even yelped a little. With the door closed there was nothing but the purest darkness around them until a large elaborate fireplace full of green flames lit itself at the far end of the hall. It was huge, probably 10-feet across and the jagged brickwork arch above it looked like fangs. The Sheriff and Mr. Lahey tried tugging on the large iron rings embedded in the door, but it was no use, they were trapped.

"Stay together." The Sheriff admonished the kids, even out of uniform he radiated competence and reassurance. The whole group huddled together as they slowly made their way down the center of the hall.

"This is so creepy." Stiles muttered gleefully.

"There aren't any doors." Allison pointed out, and it was true. The only door in the whole place was the one they had just come through. The stone walls were otherwise uninterrupted. They clustered in the eerie green light given off by the fireplace. It cast a sickly flickering glow over the group as they exchanged uneasy glances.

 "Now what?" Jackson demanded.

 “Who the hell are you?” A voice cut out of the darkness right behind them, making everyone jump and whirl around. A twenty-something man with dark hair stood behind them, a deep frown on his scruffy face. He was wearing completely bizarre clothing. His long legs were encased in boot cut pants with vertical circus stripes in alternating mint and lime and his strong shoulders were hugged by a mulberry, crushed velvet, tailed jacket. It should have looked ridiculous but he wore it naturally and filled out the jacket nicely. He was glaring at them with green-hazel eyes that reflected oddly in the firelight.

"Is everything in this place decorated in those hideous colors?" Lydia muttered in dismay.

Mr. Whittemore puffed up indignantly, "What do you mean ‘who are we’? Who are you?"

The strangely dressed man looked Mr. Whittemore’s dove grey suited form up and down in contempt. "This is private property. You're trespassing."

"Non. We were invited." Allison corrected politely.

"By who?"

"By whom?" Lydia corrected, earning herself a glare.

"By whom." The stranger ground out.

"We don't know." Isaac offered apologetically.

"How can you not know?"

"We found Golden Tickets." Stiles chimed in. “They were printed with an invitation.”

"So, let's see them." The man held out a lavender gloved hand impatiently. His eyes narrowed on Stiles as the teen began to fidget uncomfortably.

"Uh, we used them to unlock the gate." Stiles admitted sheepishly.

"Which is now locked again." Tall, dark and grumpy sighed, crossing his arms. "All of the doors are locked, I've checked."

"Uh, yeah. That's the whole point of a lock-in."

"A lock-in?" Those green-blue-was that a little purple? eyes focused on Stiles again.

"Yeah, lock-in, dusk until dawn survival tour. It said so right on the ticket."

He eyed Stiles like he was an idiot. "So, you willingly let yourself be invited into an unknown situation and cut off from the world for an entire night? Not very bright of you."

"HEY! I'm not stupid. My Dad's the Sheriff." Undefinable hazel eyes turned to Stiles' Dad who nodded acknowledgement. "Besides, someone's been running the factory. This is a legit business not a murder trap. It's just a bit of fun!"

Mystery guy tsked, "I'm the only Hale left. No one should have had access to the factory, no one could have sent out those tickets."

Allison gasped in surprise and her aunt shifted, nudging her gently. Lydia watched them with eyes full of speculation. Stiles was pretty sure her mind was full of sales statistics between the two companies. Hale’s products being back on the open market was an even bigger deal to the Argents if it was being run by an actual Hale and not a copy-cat chocolatier. The Hales and Argents were both old money, keep it in the family, line of succession type companies and for someone to claim the name and relation to one of the families was a big deal in a ‘lost heir’ kind of way. It was all very Victorian.

"Hale, as in the Hale family?" The Sheriff asked, "You were all reported dead."

"Well, I’ve been Derek Hale all my life, so obviously rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated." Stiles barked out a laugh at the deadpan delivery. He was a little in awe of finally meeting a Hale, and the guy had a sense of humor.

"If you have some time, I'd like to sit down and discuss what happened to your family that night." The Sheriff was wearing his concerned Dad face. He took it as a personal failure that the Beacon Hills PD didn't know what happened to the Hales.

"How about we find a way out first? I don't know who wanted you all gathered here or why." Derek looked highly uncomfortable in the face of the patented Stilinski concern. Once a Stilinski decided you were their priority they never wavered. Stiles should know he’d been bullying his Dad into eating better since he was eight.

Jackson scoffed, "Yeah, that's likely. You wouldn't have been here waiting for us if that were true. Take some acting lessons before you try to pull the whole 'cryptic local guide' thing. You're not very convincing. This horror tour is so cliche and the reluctant guide thing is so overdone, besides, everyone knows that all the Hales died."

"That's unconfirmed actually." Scott corrected.

"Well, then where have they been?" Jackson demanded snottily.

"Look, I don't know who sent out those tickets." Derek broke in before one of the teens threw a punch. "My whole family is dead and I left town right after the fire. No one had access to the factory. I only came back after I heard about the Golden Tickets. When I got here, I was locked in. The reason I'm here to 'greet you' is that I heard the gates open and I was trying to get there before they closed again."

Even the Sheriff looked skeptical at that. It was pretty convenient for him to arrive just as they needed a guide. Stiles was thrilled. "A mysterious benefactor has invited us all here for an unknown purpose and will probably pick us off one by one. Very House on Haunted Hill. I LOVE IT!"

"Dude, you're a little too excited about this." Scott told him as everyone else just stared and his Dad shook his head in despair.

"I don't care what you do." Derek said, glaring at Jackson, "I'm going to keep looking for a way out. If you want to come with me fine, but I'm not your tour guide and I'm not responsible if you get lost or left behind." He pushed through the matched crowd of paired offspring and guardians. When he got to the fireplace he shoved on one of the hanging brick 'fangs' and the fire turned purple before splitting in the middle, pillars of fire bracketing a newly revealed stone corridor that sloped away into the darkness.

"Secret passages!" Stiles chortled in glee. "Best castle ever."

Derek glanced at him over his shoulder with dry humor in his eyes, "Glad you approve."

"Sarcasm. Even better!" Stiles clambered into the fireplace, stumbling over the hearth's brickwork, intent on following the quickly disappearing Hale. He was actually able to talk to one of the reclusive and previously presumed-dead candy makers. No way was he letting the guy out of his sight.

"Stiles!" His Dad called after him, as he darted between the twin flames.

"What? It's not like we have any other ways out of this room. We didn't even know about this one." He gestured to the stone corridor around him. "We would have been stuck in here forever without his help." He turned and hurried after the mysterious Hale.

"He'll be okay." Ms. McCall clapped the Sheriff on his shoulder.

"Boy should learn to listen to his father." Mr. Lahey criticized harshly. "I'd never let my son get away with disrespect like that."

Isaac flinched.

"Stiles is a good kid." The Sheriff glared at the man. "And he's right, Derek is the only guide we have. We should try to stick with him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want more up to date information about what I'm up to, or if you want to message me, I just set up a [Facebook page](https://www.facebook.com/Lightningskies) or you can always visit me on [my Tumblr](https://monitorzombie.tumblr.com)


	3. Down the Chocolate River

The stone corridor lead them deep underground, dipping and rising, narrowing and then falling away on one side so that they were shuffling along a ledge over a cavernous abyss. The torches were sporadic and cast more shadows than light. Still the group carried on.

Finally, a series of steps led them up and out into a grassy graveyard. The odd group blinked in the fresh light and looked around in awe as they filed out the end of the passage. Eerie glowing fog lay heavy over everything, wisps of it flowing out to curl around their ankles. Crooked headstones loomed out of the dim landscape like jagged teeth. The spindly skeletons of trees were sprinkled throughout, dripping with hanging mosses. The whole graveyard had the feeling of a slumbering threat. It felt like the whole area could come alive to devour them at any moment. There was a suspended, not quite realized, malicious energy that hung in the air.

"Did we just come out of a mausoleum?" Allison whispered, looking back. With the heavy atmosphere it didn’t seem at all odd for her to keep her voice quiet. They had emerged from a large sepulcher built right into the wall. It was flanked by columns and a collection of child sized hooded figures that made her shiver.

"This can't possibly follow any of Beacon Hill's zoning laws." Mr. Whittemore grumbled, brushing dust off of his formerly pristine jacket.

"The Castle was here before Beacon Hills had zoning laws." Mr. Stilinski admitted. "I'm not sure we have anything on books about structures this elaborate anyway."

Derek had stopped in front of a large wall carved with burial niches full of bones. He was running his fingers over an inhumanly large femur that could have once belonged to a horse and muttering to himself, paying no attention to anything but his thoughts. Stiles was perched on a nearby gravestone, chewing on a fistful of… grass?

"Stiles, what are you eating?" The Sheriff asked in dismay, "Get down from there, it's disrespectful."

"No, you don't understand." The teen protested. "It's not a real graveyard. Everything in here is edible! Derek said so."

Jackson snorted. "So you decided to eat dirt just because a stranger told you to? What an idiot."

Stiles flushed, "Well, it's true. The grass is lime, the dirt seems to be crushed oreo. Seriously, check it out for yourself."

Lydia gracefully bent over to pluck a single blade of grass and brought it up to her nose to sniff. A considering look spread over her face as she delicately let the strand dissolve on her tongue. She wandered over to sample some of the hanging moss next for comparison, fingers trailing over the twisted licorice branches.

"This is so stupid." Jackson angrily kicked at a nearby gravestone, getting even angrier as his foot broke right through its candy shell. He went after it with a vengeance, splitting it open and tearing the hardened painted shell away from the gummy center.

Isaac plucked a poisonous looking purple and yellow mushroom, eyeing it distrustfully, but his eyes lit up when he took a bite of it's cap. He plucked a whole armful, stuffing his face as fast as he could chew.

"Alli. Help me with this. I want to see what's inside." Kate threw her weight into shoving the slab cover off of a carved sarcophagus. The two of them worked together to shift the heavy capstone. As the container cracked open a sigh of stale air hit them in the face. Allison peered down into the coffin to see a perfectly preserved skeleton. She was horrified as her aunt casually grabbed the skull with no sense of respect. Kate held up the skull, turning it this way and that before she ran her tongue over the cheekbone, dipping into the eye hole. "MMM."

"Kate!" Allison hissed. "That's disgusting!"

Her aunt started laughing and tossed her the skull. Allison caught it instinctually, flinching when she realized what was in her hands and carefully put it back in the open grave.

"Relax Alli, it's made of sugar." Kate knocked her knuckles against the shrouded statue carved into the top of the sarcophagus. "It's all made of sugar."

Mrs. McCall plucked a swirly chocolate truffle from a strangely shaped bush and took a small bite. She made a face at the maple creme contents. Dropping the truffle back into the bush she picked through a few more truffles with different colors and styles of swirl until she found one she liked.

Mrs. Martin plucked a black rose off a dead looking rosebush and considered it. She peeled off a single petal and chewed it thoughtfully before enthusiastically biting off the whole bloom making her cheeks bulge inelegantly. She pressed her hand to her mouth demurely as she quickly chewed and swallowed eyes darting around to make sure no one had seen her.

Scott merrily crunched his way through some dried leaves made out of toffee and hardened caramel. He held one up and twirled it between his fingers, admiring the fine artistic detail on the leaves. Every one was different, the way any two leaves are different.

Mr. Lahey and Mr. Whittemore just watched it all with disdain. They started to share a commiserating glance, but Mr. Whittemore looked down his nose contemptuously at Mr. Lahey and walked away leaving the other man stewing in his anger.

“I can feel you staring at me.” Derek’s droll voice made Stiles jump guiltily where he’d been boring holes into Derek’s back.

“I want to ask you ALL THE THINGS, Dude. I don’t even know where to start.” Stiles enthused, picking at the candy shell of the headstone he was sitting on. “I’m from Beacon Hills. You’re like a local legend. Well, I say you, but it’s not like _you’re_ particularly famous, just your family.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“Dude. You’re like the candy Jesus, risen from the dead on Halloween!” Derek turned to look at him in surprise, eyebrows raised in confusion but his lips quirked in a smirk.

“You think I’m Jesus.”

“Wait, no. That’s not what I meant. I’m not doing this right.” Stiles deflated and looked away, concentrating on digging his fingers into the rapidly deteriorating corner of the headstone. “I grew up on stories my Mom told me about the Candy Castle and your family. As a kid, I always dreamed that someday I’d meet a Hale my age and we’d become best friends and they’d invite me to come make candy with them.”

Derek sighed and leaned up against the grave marker next to him. “What do you want to know?”

Stiles perked up immediately.

Jackson kept knocking over and desecrating the candy gravestones until he came to the end of the row and found himself on the bank of a disgusting brown watered river. He didn't notice the pitter-patter of tiny feet creeping up behind him as he sneered down at the fast flowing liquid. He did feel it though, when several sets of small clawed hands grabbed him firmly and gave him a hard shove. He heard the sound of insane giggling as he overbalanced and belly-flopped straight into the river. The last thing he saw before the brown river closed over his head was the reflection of several pairs of glowing green eyes watching him fall with malicious glee.

Everyone looked up at the sound of an almighty splash and rushed to the edge of the river. Jackson was out in the middle of the river swearing and thrashing even as the current dragged him along. The whole group kept pace with him, following him down the banks of the river, waiting to see what would happen.

"He's a strong swimmer." Mr. Whittemore blustered, “I’m sure he'll be fine, even in such a dirty river."

"That isn't water." Derek commented, watching Jackson gasp and struggle, sinking beneath the surface again and again as he thrashed. "That's a river of chocolate, parts of it are heated to 113 degrees in order to properly break down all six types of cocoa butter crystals."

"113 degrees! That's not a safe temperature for swimming." Ms. McCall gasped. "Human bodies shut down and the brain starts to die at 105 degrees. Any more than a few minutes at that temperature will kill him!"

The Sheriff tore down a hefty looking creeping vine and tried to toss it to the drowning teen. It fell short and quickly sank beneath the surface. The Sheriff looked ready to jump in after the kid if he needed to.

"That's only the initial processing of the chocolate, so I'm sure that's just at the head of the river." Derek consoled, "This part of the river is probably no more than 93 degrees. It's the human buoyancy problem you'd want to worry about. Chocolate is so thick and heavy I would think it'd be like swimming in quicksand. No matter how good a swimmer you are, it would exhaust you quickly."

Jackson's chocolate covered head disappeared again and this time he didn't resurface. A trail of bubbles was swept off down the left-handed stream as the graveyard ended at a wall and the river split off into several branches and disappeared into various stone tunnels.

"… and it's his lucky day." Derek remarked in a calm tone. "That particular tunnel doesn't lead to the top of the waterfall. We're the only factory in the world that mixes it's chocolate by waterfall, you know."

No one was sure how to respond to that.

"At least the conching process takes place upstream." Derek continued completely oblivious to the mood of the situation. "Wouldn't want him ground down into silky smooth chocolate, now would we. He'd taste awful. At least a whole body is easier to dredge out of the river than little bits of one."

Stiles couldn’t hide his tiny smirk and nodded his agreement when Derek glanced at him. At least he wasn’t the only one with a morbid sense of humor and healthy sense of schadenfreude. The corner of Derek’s lips quirked up at Stiles’ commiserating look.

"You don't understand." Mr. Whittemore whined, "Jackson is Captain of the swim team. He would never just drown."

"A smart swimmer doesn't fight the current, he cuts across it to reach the bank. I'm sure he's washed up downstream." The Sheriff comforted. "We'll go get him." He guided Mr. Whittemore away down the shoreline. A narrow stone walkway edged the river on each side, just wide enough for them to walk single file. "Stay here," he admonished everyone before a turn in the tunnel forced him out of sight.

A grinding noise made the whole group jump. Derek had returned to the wall and pulled a bone from it’s niche. Stiles noticed that it was apparently a secret handle, because it trailed a rusty old chain as Derek pulled it as hard as he could. His shoulder muscles flexed deliciously beneath his jacket as the chain begrudgingly moved inch by inch. A large section of the wall across the river rumbled and sank into the molten chocolate, revealing an alcove with a creepy looking gondola. A human sized and anatomically correct sugar skeleton lurched to its feet and grabbed a candy striped pole. It gently poled over to the shore in front of the stunned group.

Derek gracefully hopped in and took a seat, he looked up at the rest of them expectantly. "Staying or going?"

Stiles considered for a moment, looking between where his dad had disappeared and the open bench next to Derek. His decision was made quickly and he jumped down into the boat, taking the seat right next to the candy maker. Derek smelled like hazelnut coffee with plenty of french vanilla cream. Even just smelling it made Stiles feel warm.

Derek side-eyed Stiles for sitting so close, giving him a raised eyebrow as he pointedly glanced at the tiny space between their thighs and the larger expanse of unused bench that Stiles had deliberately ignored but the chocolatier didn't actually say anything. Stiles just smirked at him. Derek huffed and looked away but the tips of his ears were a little pinker.

Allison’s aunt seemed oddly eager to continue as she quickly guided Allison into a pair of seats at the bow of the boat as far from Derek as possible. She hadn’t had any sort of reaction to Jackson’s mishap either, giving off a sense of cold amusement. Stiles thought she might be a corporate spy, sent to memorize as many Hale secrets as she could. An accident in the factory could be the perfect dirt for her. Whereas Derek’s weirdness seemed to come from being socially stunted, she felt like the opposite, perfectly composed but rotten underneath. Stiles didn’t like her and was glad to see her sit so far away.

"Dude, your dad said to stay here." Scott hissed as he clambered in after Stiles.

"We'll be fine as long as we stay together." Stiles just hand waved the other kid's worries. He was determined to get the most out of this tour and see if he could fluster Derek any more. He had a terrible habit of poking at interesting people to see what they'd do.

Lydia swept onto the boat gracefully, taking her own seat with a swish of her skirt. She sat at the far back of the boat and was inspecting the skeleton speculatively. "I, for one, am curious what else there is to see." Her mother followed nervously, flinching as the boat shifted a bit when she boarded. She made sure to have Lydia between herself and the skeleton as she sat down.

Isaac looked like he was going to follow orders and stay put, but his father climbed aboard, “Isaac, get over here.” The skinny boy scrambled for the boat, wincing as it rocked with his movement, unbalancing everyone. Ms. Martin turned white and Mr. Lahey turned red. “Sit down boy, before you drown us all!”

Once everyone was seated, the skeleton sprung to life, guiding the gondola down the river. They took a different branch of the river than the Sheriff and Mr. Whittemore had.

"This one doesn't lead to the waterfall either, does it?" Isaac asked nervously, clutching at the side of the boat with bloodless knuckles and earning a disdainful look from his father.

Allison glanced back at the graveyard one last time before they drifted out of view and she was shocked to see that the shrouded figures on the mausoleum were gone but for one. It’s hooded head was angled in such a way that it seemed to be looking back at her. She stared at it as she tried to remember where it had been looking before but her view was quickly blocked by the stone walls of the tunnel. A shiver traced its way down her spine, she hoped she was just seeing things.

The tunnel let them out into a giant underground cavern with vaulted ceilings high above them. The ceilings were held up by what seemed like endless acres of big thick ossuary pillars made of stacked bone. There must have been thousands of skeleton’s worth of bones for each pillar and there were innumerable pillars fading off into the distance in every direction. The chocolate river spread wide, and the only sound that could be heard was it's gentle lapping against the stonework and the sides of their gondola as they slowly drifted through. The room was so large all they could see in any direction was pillars, each sporting a single flickering torch. The surface of the chocolate river couldn't be seen through the heavy mist and it made it seem like they were floating on a cloud. They may as well have been drifting through a void, supported by nothingness.

"Who lights them all?" Ms. McCall broke the silence as she marveled at the sheer number of torches easily counting a dozen stretching in each direction before they faded in the mist. Her voice echoed strangely in the overlarge space.

"They never go out."

"That's impossible." Lydia rebutted, "In order to burn they must be a consumable fuel source. Unless there is a system of hoses built into the pillars that constantly supplies a liquid fuel, they HAVE to go out sometime."

Derek gave her a flat look. He obviously didn't care about the matter as much as she did. "If you say so."

”I know so." Lydia huffed and crossed her arms, simultaneously placated and irritated by his easy admission.

They drifted for what seemed like an age, moving ever onwards, steering around the pillars. Stiles tried to keep his orientation, trying to calculate the degree of each turn, but he soon gave up when he realized that he had no idea which way the current would be pushing them.

“Second to the right and straight on till morning.” He muttered, catching Derek’s attention. He could feel the man staring at him, but stubbornly refused to acknowledge it, pretending to be absorbed in looking out across the cavernous underground lake. Stiles was a master at coming on too strong and putting people off when he was really interested in them. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what the other man’s first impression of him was.

His non-existant attention span prevented their stalemate from getting too uncomfortable. Stiles kept catching moving shapes in the distance, flashes caught between the ever moving pillars. Derek finally realized that Stiles wasn’t going to meet his eyes and explained, "They’re supply boats. Other factories use conveyor belts, we use canals."

Finally, they approached a dock, reaching out of the darkness and the skeleton slowly drew them alongside the swaying, web covered landing. Derek climbed out of the boat without a single wobble. Everyone disembarked quickly, wanting the feeling of firm land under themselves again and they were immediately disappointed as the dock dipped and shimmied under them with each slight movement and was barely floating under all of their weight.   
  
Stiles’ trailing foot caught on the side of the boat as the dock sank low under their combined weight and he tripped. He hopped and lurched drunkenly as he completely lost his balance. Everyone braced themselves as the whole dock swayed dangerously under them. Stiles stumbled to the side and almost fell right off the edge, but Derek grabbed one of his flailing arms and pulled him close to stabilize them both.

Stiles’ heart was going a mile a minute. He was used to humiliating himself but this one actually felt dangerous. He smiled up at Derek, who was frowning at him in concern and stepped away, patting the toned chest covered in surprisingly soft purple velvet. “I’m good.” 

With a nod, Derek strode confidently off down the dock, his body naturally shifting with the bobbing of the wooden platforms beneath him. The others trailed slowly behind him, enough distance between them that they each had a separate section and wouldn't unbalance each other.

They gingerly made their way to a concrete walkway running along the sides of the underground lake disappearing into dark shadows in either direction. The wall in front of them recessed into a nook with three huge vault doors. Everyone sighed in relief as they reached solid ground.   
  
Mr. Lahey was just about to step up onto the causeway when he heard a splash and caught sight of something moving in the shallows of the lake. He leaned over to get a better look and a reptilian, chocolate covered creature darted out of the fluid and dragged Mr. Lahey off into the darkness. Ms. Martin, who had been right behind him and was now the last one on the dock screamed and scrambled up onto the concrete, pressing herself against the wall.

"Dad?" Isaac had frozen up and was so pale he looked like he was going to fall over. He looked like he'd gone into shock, staring blankly at the empty place where his father stood just seconds ago.

"Dude, are you okay?" Scott asked in concern as his mother gently put a comforting hand on Isaac's shoulder.

The kid freaked out and slapped her hand away. He rushed out onto the dock, setting it to swaying dangerously and started yelling into the darkness, "DAD? DAD?”

Stiles turned to Derek, who was frowning down into the gently lapping chocolate lake at where the creature had appeared.  "What was that?"

Judging from the shaken look on the man's face he wasn't going to get a good answer. Derek looked legitimately worried for a moment as he looked up to meet Stiles eyes. "I don't know."

No one was quite willing to brave the wildly rocking dock to calm Isaac down. They watched him freak out for a few more moments, but he didn't seem inclined to calming on his own.

Derek sighed and pulled a whistle out of his breast pocket. Stiles watched his cheeks puff out and his fingers twiddle over the holes of the small penny whistle but no audible sound came out. It didn't seem to have any effect at all until a tiny little blonde girl and dark skinned boy armed with claws and fangs sidled up to him from out of nowhere. They barely reached his hip and their eyes glowed a vivid unnatural purple.

"What the hell are those?" Lydia demanded, earning herself a glare from the tiny blonde bombshell.

"Those are Oompa-Loompas." Derek explained completely unhelpfully, "They're from Loompa-Land. I traveled the world after my family died, trying to outrun the grief. I was attacked by a hornswoggler in Loompa-Land. I owe their tribe my life."

"There is no such place." Lydia crossed her arms and stared down at the Oompa-Loompas.

"Yes, there _IS_." The tiny little blonde insisted, stomping her foot and glaring right back up at the redhead who was literally twice her size. "Shows what you know."

"I've lived there with the tribe since my family died." Derek informed the know-it-all teen in a tone that brooked no more argument. "When I heard about the re-opening of the factory I had to come back to see who was behind it and they decided to stay with me and keep protecting me."

"Only 'cause you're so bad at taking care of yourself," The diminutive blonde crossed her arms, "… and because you never told us you were from a chocolate factory. CHOCOLATE, Derek! How could you leave all this behind? We were lucky to find one cocoa pod a year in Loompa-Land."

"Erica." Derek chided and the tiny blonde turned worshipful eyes on him. "I need you and Boyd to help Isaac. Can you get him to the infirmary? He needs a quiet place to lay down.”

She peered at the teen on the dock and a sultry smile crossed her small face. "He's cute!"

Erica hopped over the edge of the causeway, hips rolling and shaking easily with the rocking dock and walked right up to Isaac. She pulled one of his giant hands into her grasp and swung their connected arms back and forth like a child. She was in full manipulation mode as she smiled innocently up at him in a way that hid her fangs, "Hi, I'm Erica!"

Isaac stared down at her in shock, "I-isaac."

"Make sure they get there alright." Derek looked down at Boyd. "People are going missing. There's someone or something else here. Warn the others."

"We'll protect him." The tiny male promised, before climbing into the dock.

"Nice to meet you, Isaac! That's Boyd." Erica pointed at her stoic partner and he nodded at the large teen with a quiet 'Hey'. "We're Oompa-Loompas, from Loompa-Land."

"I've never heard of Loompa-Land." Isaac admitted quietly.

"If they're headed to the infirmary, I should go with them." Mrs. McCall said, hugging Scott. "Be good and stay with the group."

They watched the Oompa-Loompas help Ms. McCall gently guide Isaac back to the gondola. Once everyone was seated, the skeleton sprung into action, poling away into the darkness of the chocolate lake. Scott waved enthusiastically at his mother and she waved back at him once as they faded from view.

"Hey. Where'd Allison go?" Stiles asked, looking around. Their large group had dwindled down to Lydia and her mother, Scott, Stiles and Derek. One of the three giant doors was open and the Argents were nowhere to be seen.

* * *

Kate pulled Allison down another random hallway. "This is so boring, let's guide our own tour." 

Allison bit her lip and looked back at where they'd left the others. "But what about Jackson and Mr. Lahey?"

"I'm sure they'll be fine." Kate laughed as she sped up into a run in the long hallway, Allison easily keeping pace with her comfortable lope. "It's a factory tour, they'd be sued if it turned out to be unsafe. It's all actors and misdirection. C'mon, live a little."

Allison laughed as she let her Aunt drag her away to explore on their own. Kate could never be stopped when she had a plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want more up to date information about what I'm up to, or if you want to message me, I just set up a [Facebook page](https://www.facebook.com/Lightningskies) or you can always visit me on [my Tumblr](https://monitorzombie.tumblr.com)


	4. The Webbing Room

Mr. Whittemore and the Sheriff followed the river down through an increasingly narrow winding tunnel. The snaking river stream ended in a culvert that dumped the chocolate directly into a marshy swamp. They jumped down from the low ledge and immediately squished ankle deep into several inches of chocolate muck. Mr. Whittemore grumbled constantly as his expensive leather shoes were soaked through and his pants were growing more and more stained with each splashed step.

The Sheriff shook his head at the other man’s antics as they made their way deeper into the swamp. He snapped off one of the marsh reeds to look at and sour sugar poured out of the hollow at the center of the broken reed. The reed itself seemed to be made of peanut brittle. The ground was made of soggy, dissolving marshmallow and was sticky and slippery at the same time, sucking at their shoes, but bouncing and jittering under each step like jello. The Sheriff had to stop several times to drag the increasingly chocolate sodden Mr. Whittemore back to his feet after he had stepped the wrong way.

The landscape wasn't as flawlessly disguised as the graveyard had been. The whole area had the feel of an unfinished illusion. It was an odd mix of marsh and factory, with the floor resembling nothing more than a natural landscape and the ceiling covered with brightly colored pipes of all sizes and colors. The factory was obviously in poor repair as all kinds of ingredients dripped on them from the decaying pipes above them. The Sheriff was starting to feel like a sundae buffet after Stiles got his hands on it and added EVERY available topping. He had a bit of marshmallow glommed onto the side of his neck, his shirt was stained with fudge and crushed pineapple and he could taste maraschino cherry juice when he licked his lips. He and Mr. Whittemore both had a fine coating of powdered sugar on top of their various syrups after they passed through a cloud of it hissing out of a fissure in the side of a pipe.

Mr. Whittemore suddenly cried out and lost his balance, toppling over behind some tall nutty smelling reeds and disappearing from view. The Sheriff heard a crack and went dutifully to the hapless man’s aide. He was expecting to see the man having broken something, but it turned out that the robust barrister had landed in a nest of some sort, crushing a clutch of huge, ostrich sized eggs. They were leaking green goo, but it was less disgusting than it could have been once the overwhelming smell of lime hit his senses.

"They really go all out on the realism." The Sheriff turned a bit of the 'shell' over in his hands. It was a delicately painted candy coating, dripping with gooey 'yolk'.

Mr. Whittemore laid on his back in the nest, making stuttering, horrified noises and staring up at something behind the Sheriff. The back of his neck started to prickle and he whirled around to find himself face to face with an enormous gummy serpent bearing down on him with incongruously sharp looking fangs.

* * *

 "You can't have them!" Erica hissed around her fangs, crouching defensively in front of Isaac as Boyd did the same to Ms. McCall. "Derek told us to take care of them."

Their glowing purple eyes darted between the green gazes circled around them. The low light was only enough to show the gleam of fangs and claws in the darkness.

"Why are you doing this?" Boyd demanded. "We all promised Derek our loyalty."

"You promised Derek your loyalty." The strongest warrior from their Oompa-Loompa tribe, Ennis, rasped around his fangs.

"We promised our loyalty to the factory…” "… and Derek's not in control of the factory." The twins, Ethan and Aiden chipped in. They had always been cruel. Bullying Erica and Boyd constantly. Once they had even attempted to feed them to a Vermicious Knid and then played it off as a practical joke when their victims had survived the attack.

"It truly is a pity how poorly you chose." The chieftain of their tribe, Deucalion looked at them with disappointment in his eyes. He was their leader, their elder and wise man. Why was he doing this? "Unfortunately, we cannot let news of our true loyalties get back to Derek. We aren't just here for the humans. We will be taking you as well."

"Try to at least put up an interesting fight." Kali, the last of their tribe members to have travelled with Derek to Beacon Hills hissed. The pack of green eyed Oompa-Loompas darted forward as one. Erica and Boyd didn't stand a chance.

* * *

"None of you are afraid of spiders are you?" Derek asked before they entered the next room. He didn't bother to wait for an answer before starting to pull the large iron door open. Immediately the sound of skittering bugs filled the air. There was a lull as the door groaned, but the sound returned twice as loud. The bugs knew they were there.

Whatever Stiles was expecting when he peered in, it wasn't the gauzy wall of pink that he found. Derek dug his hand into the soft curtain and tore a hole in it, parting the fine strands and shaking off the bits that stuck to his hand. Stiles stared at the sticky mess in horror. ”What is it?"

"Sugar webbing."

"You can't possibly be trying to say that you have spiders that spin edible webbing, it's not biologically possible." Stiles was surprised that the logical part of Lydia's brain hadn't shut down yet. As the tour went on, she seemed more and more like a robot, pretty and functional but not much fun, running on pure intelligence but incapable of imagination.

He loved research and knew just as well as she did that spider silk wasn't typically edible, but Stiles had grown up in Beacon Hills where the magic of the Hale family and the Candy Castle were his childhood fairy tales. If Derek said that they had spiders that could spin sugar, Stiles was willing to believe it. He'd want to test and prod at the idea, analyzing how it was possible, but he was willing to go on faith. Everything he'd seen so far tonight was amazing, he loved every second of it.

Stiles followed Derek's lead, trying to duck through the torn opening without touching the webbing. He failed spectacularly and stumbled straight through a wall of it, ripping down a huge chunk and thoroughly clearing the doorway. Derek watched him incredulously as he spastically flailed, his arms trailing streamers of pink fluff. With a sigh and a roll of his eyes he helped Stiles scrape most of the webbing off of himself, carefully brushing down his arms and chest. Stiles hoped he wasn’t imagining the way Derek’s hands lingered a bit.

Those hands must have been magic, because Derek tacked the large sheets of webbing to the wall, draping them gracefully back where they'd started but out of the doorway like artfully arranged curtains. The webbing stuck obediently where he'd put it and didn't stick to him at all when he removed his hands.

Stiles gaped at him, slightly intimate moment forgotten. "How did you DO that?"

Derek looked a little abashed at his amazement, he reddened a bit and muttered as he turned away. "The factory likes my family."

They made their way slowly through the room twisting and turning around gauzy pillars and fuzzy pink veils. It could have been miles or just feet across from one wall to the other, there was no way to tell with such a winding path. The moment they lost sight of the doorway it seemed that they were enclosed in a cloud. The only thing that changed was the color of the webbing. Stiles could take vague guesses about the bordering edges of each nest by the change of color and hue from pinks to purples to greens to blues and back to a different shade of pink. It was like getting lost in a tie-dye cloud, all the colors swirling into each other.

Derek's brow was furrowing more and more as he tried to lead them through the room, the sugary membranes never sticking overmuch to his hands as he broke through them. Several times he scraped away webbing to reveal a blank wall, making the older man mutter and attempt to reorient himself each time he missed the door. He was completely at ease in the disorienting room, but seemed irritated with himself each time he steered them wrong.

Stiles couldn't even begin to guess what instinct was guiding the man. Even though he was obviously unsure about the location of the door, he never circled back to the same part of the wall twice. It felt to Stiles like they were traveling in circles, but he wasn't able to even get a sense for the size of the space. The webbing made it feel both claustrophobic and endless. He was beginning to forget what a sharp edge looked like. Still he trusted Derek to eventually figure it out. He did wonder where the spiders were. He could hear them, but had yet to see one.

Ms. Martin trailed behind the group, gingerly picking her way after them, cringing every time a bit of gauzy sugar brushed her skin. She froze as she heard a chitter and a scuttling noise right alongside her, hidden from view by the webbing. A dark shadow darted by her feet, obscured by several layers of sugar shrouding. She stared at the fluffy mass of cotton candy in horror, only relaxing as the insect noises faded away from her. Breathing a sigh of relief she looked up to find that the group had moved on without her.

"Lydia?" Ms. Martin turned around in a full circle when she didn't immediately spot her daughter, further disorienting herself,  "Sweetheart, where are you?"

She set off in a random direction, but didn't notice the large, candy-red hourglass symbol moving above her, between the draped veils of spiderweb. A large, black insect leg sliced smoothly through the webbing right where she had been standing as a huge black shadow followed the vibrations she sent into the webbing as she brushed by the sensitive strands.

**“Lydia!”**

Lydia turned at the sound of her mother's panicky voice. Not seeing her anywhere behind them, she sighed in annoyance and started making her way back along their path. Her keen eyes noticed moving shadows everywhere, just out of view behind the sugar, but none of them moved like a person. She saw something coming towards her out of the corner of her eye and turned towards it only to see a gauzy wisp of sugar blowing her way due to a draft. The others must have found the door.

She brushed at a bit spiderweb that pulled at the shoulder of her blouse, but it stuck firmly to her hand. She was so concentrated on getting it off that she didn't immediately notice the multitude of fist sized spiders crawling over her clothes trailing strong strands of webbing that were being spun around her. She quickly slapped a spider away, roughly brushing off her arms to scrape them all off of her but just tangled herself in more and more spun sugar until she couldn't move and was overwhelmed. She opened her mouth to scream but gagged as a larger spider crawled onto her chest and sprayed webbing across her mouth. She mumbled and thrashed as well as she could but was dragged away and efficiently cocooned tightly by the spiders.

"Dude. Where's Lydia?" With nothing interesting to see in their cotton covered world, Stiles had been following the flex of Derek’s strong shoulders with little hearts in his eyes like a besotted tween, but was shaken out of it when the panic in Scott's voice registered. ".. and her Mom's gone too."

Derek had finally led them to an exit and they all piled out the door into a stone corridor. The chocolatier turned and stared back into the webbing room, where there was no Lydia or Ms. Martin in sight. Stiles had no idea what he was thinking, there was a tight, pained look on his face. "They're not going to be coming."

He started pushing the huge heavy door shut, but Scott got right in his face and pushed back. He shouldn't have had a chance against the much stronger man, but Derek stopped and stared him down rather than just squishing him to Scott flavored paste with the door.

"What do you mean, they're not coming? They were right there! We can just go back for them."

Derek's jaw clenched, "Scott, listen."

"No! You listen! We can't just leave them. Why are you so okay with leaving people behind? You can't just refuse to help."

"I CAN'T HELP THEM!" Derek roared, his eyes glinting purple and his teeth looking sharper than was natural, ”I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON! I was just a little kid when I lived here, I'm doing my best just to remember how to get around. The whole factory feels wrong. There is a dark presence here and the closer we get to the center of the factory, the less the Castle is responding to me."

"Now, listen." He grabbed Scott and spun him to face the Webbing Room. "The spiders have gone quiet. They're never quiet." He was right, the constant click of carapaces and skitter of many legs had gone silent. "Whatever it is that took over the factory, it's been following us since you got here. It pushed Jackson in the river, it sent the creature that grabbed Mr. Lahey, it may have taken Allison and her Aunt and now it has Lydia and her mother. I NEED to close this door and we NEED to move on."

His eyes wide and horrified, Scott took a step back, and then another, until he was leaning against the corridor wall away from the doorway. He didn’t stop Derek as he closed the huge vaulted door. The heavy thud should have been reassuring, but it really wasn't. Scott and Stiles eyed each other uneasily as they meekly followed Derek.

Stiles broke the awkward silence first, "So, what's the plan."

Derek's back hunched under his jacket. "It's been circling us. Herding us. Whatever it is, it brought you here to hunt you. Maybe it even knew I would come back. It won't let us anywhere near the exits. So we're heading for the center of the Castle. All of the power in the whole factory comes out of the Boiler Room. I'll shut the whole thing down if I have to."

"Kamikaze run." Stiles' eyes darkened with determination and his expression hardened. "I'm in."

"What?" Scott barked in surprise. "How can you agree with this? He's totally insane."

"I can kinda feel what he's talking about." Stiles admitted, "Like that prickly uncomfortable feeling when you know someone is watching you. I believe him, and that means whatever it is, it probably has my Dad, and your Mom."

Scott obviously hadn't considered that. He got really quiet as he thought it over. Stiles met Derek's wide eyes. He apparently hadn't thought he’d be believed either. Stiles felt a little bad at his previous assessment that the guy didn’t care about the fact that people were getting hurt. It wasn’t his fault they had gotten themselves into a dangerous situation and he’d been trying his best to keep them ahead of it without causing a panic. Meanwhile, Stiles had just been treating him like a zoo animal, an exotic animal to oogle and poke at.

* * *

Kate and Allison wandered through the orchard they had found nestled in the center of the factory. It was the middle of the night but the ceiling was glassed in. Carefully designed lighting diffused through frosted glass made it seem like it was the middle of the afternoon. Allison took a deep breath and marveled over the incredibly realistic crisp autumn air. She could close her eyes and swear that it was all natural. 

In a complete contrast to all the dead looking plants in the graveyard, the trees here were vivid autumn colors and sported branches heavy with brightly colored apples. The trees were flanked on one side by a huge pumpkin patch with every type of pumpkin candy someone could imagine. Mellowcreme, gummy, marzipan, fondant, nougat, chocolate covered and spun sugar pumpkins in all sizes and shapes filled the patch.

The other side of the orchard led into a huge cornfield with tall corn stalks sprouting candy corn on the cob. They had all the colors, indian corn and special edition Valentine's corn, pastel easter corn, red caramel apple corn, every possible seasonal variation was growing all together in the huge field. Allison idly wondered how they separated it all out. Large black licorice crows with corn striped beaks startled from the field as Allison ran her hand over the stalks as she and Kate passed by.

"Oh, this is beautiful." Allison trailed her fingers over a low hanging apple. Everything in the orchard was growing off the trees already candied or coated in caramel. Some were even sugared or had sprinkles.

"Green apple, my favorite." She pulled down a shiny apple covered in a bright green candy shell.

"Allison, NO!" Kate tried to stop her, but as Allison looked up to meet her horrified gaze her teeth were already crunching through the apple's candy shell.

"Aunt Kate?" Allison dropped the apple as she stumbled heavily against a nearby tree, "I-I don't. I don't feel so good." Her eyes widened in disbelief as a skull and crossbones shaped plume of green smoke escaped her mouth when she exhaled.

Kate caught her as she slid sideways. "I gotcha."

"I'm so tired."

"You just take a nap, baby girl. I'm right here." Allison's eyes fluttered shut as she passed out completely.

Kate quickly checked her pulse and found it strong. She stripped off her denim jacket and tucked it under Allison's head. With one last glance she left her niece there, sleeping under the tree like a bewitched Disney princess. She had a mission to complete and it was better for her soft hearted niece to stay out of it for reasons of plausible deniability.

As Kate disappeared deeper into the orchard, a large shadow separated from the shade of a nearby tree and loomed over the sleeping girl. Cold, glowing green eyes stared down at her for a moment, but the creature moved on, abandoning her where she lay, choosing to pursue more dangerous prey. Not so for the pack of smaller green eyed creatures that followed. Allison didn't so much as twitch as she was grabbed by a dozen tiny clawed hands and slowly dragged into the corn field and out of view.

* * *

“How much farther do we need to go?” Stiles asked, hunched over and gasping for breath from their brisk ‘run for your life’ jog through seemingly endless stone corridors. 

“Not far.” Derek reached out and twisted one of the wall sconces that looked like every other one of the hundreds of torches they had passed in this convoluted mess of criss-crossing hallways. There was a rumbling and grinding of stone as the blocks tiling the floor rose up, one row at a time to wall off the corridor and form stairs leading into the ceiling. Stiles was about to make a depreciating comment on how unhelpful that was, when Derek jerked the torch the other way and the ceiling slid back flooding the dark hallway with natural looking light. Which was impossible because it was still sometime between midnight and dawn.

Stiles blinked rapidly in the sudden light as they climbed out of the labyrinth and into the middle of a bright sunny corn field. Full of bright unnaturally colored corn stalks. Stiles blinked some more, just to make sure of what he was seeing.

“Is it morning already?” Scott asked in confusion, looking at his watch.

“It’s always day in the fields.”

Stiles ignored them, twisting one way and then the other trying to look at everything, mystified by the apparent change in time and space. He glanced at the ground around the opening and saw that it seemed to be perfectly normal dirt with a hole carved into it. He climbed back down a few steps, until he was eye level with the edge. He dug his hand down into the dirt and ducked his head underneath to look at the bottom of the stone ceiling. He tried to wrap his brain around the need for the dirt to be thick enough for roots vs the fact that his eyes were telling him the ground was level with the stone ceiling beneath it.

“Non-euclidean pocket dimension.” He whispered in shock, wiggling his fingers deep in the dirt without even a hint of touching stone. Of everything he’d seen tonight this was the most provably impossible. Corn stalks could not and did not grow out of stonework but the proof was right in front of him that he’d somehow hooked his arm into another dimension. “You’ve got a Mary fucking Poppins cornfield. This is some epic Escher-Dali bullshit.”

Derek just shrugged, looking bemused at his interest in the ground. “The factory is bigger on the inside. My family was always discovering new areas.”

Stiles wanted to stay and try to dig a hole in the corn field to see what was underneath, but Derek wouldn’t let him.  He laid a hand on Stiles’ lower back and urgently ushered him onwards through a gap in the stalks as the skinny teen babbled about destroying the laws of physics. It turned out that the field was actually a fully functioning corn maze. Derek seemed to know where he was going and Stiles and Scott plodded after him as he effortlessly navigated the maze. They had been walking the branched path for several minutes and Stiles had lost track of which direction they were trying to go in when Derek froze and turned to look behind them with wide eyes. A familiar stone grinding noise filled the air from somewhere too close for comfort and the ground under them rumbled.

“Tell me that the stairway resets itself automatically.” Stiles begged. He didn’t quite get the response he was looking for as Derek’s expression broke into outright panic for the first time that night.

“RUN!”

Derek shoved Scott and Stiles off the path into the rows of corn and they started cutting through the field the hard way. Stiles’s breath was short and his chest felt tight as visibility dropped to nothing with thick multicolored leaves slapping him in the face while he bounced harshly off of the surprisingly strong stalks. His pulse pounded in his ears but he could still hear the rustle of the others making their way beside him and the bone chilling growling that had started up behind them.

The world dissolved into pure confusion and terror. Stiles couldn’t tell if they were making any headway, he didn’t even know where they were fleeing to. His higher intelligence had disappeared underneath the overwhelming prey instincts screaming at him to _runrunrunrunrunrun_.

Unfortunately, even on his best days Stiles was not a graceful sort of animal and his foot caught on a fallen corn stalk, taking him down hard. His head rang with the impact and his racing heartbeat. He spit out his sudden mouthful of oreo dirt and tried to listen for his pursuers and look for Derek and Scott. The field was silent in comparison to his breathing and pulse. He was alone. He lay still and quiet, staying low on his belly and hoping not to attract any attention to himself.

Where the Hell were Derek and Scott? In his panicked state he hadn’t even known he lost them. He had tried to run in a straight line, but that was impossible to do when there were so many plants in the way. His ears picked up a faint rustling heading his way and he froze in terror, his prey instincts screaming at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want more up to date information about what I'm up to, or if you want to message me, I just set up a [Facebook page](https://www.facebook.com/Lightningskies) or you can always visit me on [my Tumblr](https://monitorzombie.tumblr.com)


	5. Lost in the Maize

Scott stumbled into one of the maze’s passages as it angled in from his right and branched off to lead in the direction he was running. He sidestepped a bit to run along the open path, knowing he would be able to run faster on clear dirt. He followed the path at top speed, making split second decisions at each intersection and finally stumbling to a stop when his path dead ended at a clearing.

There were no openings in the corn rows that could lead him away from the clearing. In the center of the small crop circle was a pair of rough-hewn plywood caskets with rope handles propped up on a platform of hay bales. The lid of the nearest casket was missing and he thought he saw something inside it. Scott took stock of his situation, he couldn’t hear the others or their pursuers. He was alone. Cautiously, he approached the casket, keeping his senses open for signs that whatever was following him was approaching.

Scott leaned over the casket and was horrified to see that Allison lay quietly inside. She was breathing so shallowly he had to hold out his hand and feel for the warmth of breath from her nose the way his mother had taught him when he started volunteering at the hospital. He was so focused on her unnatural sleep that he didn’t notice the cover of the other casket slowly slide open. He did immediately notice when a dozen small hands grabbed him and threw him head first into the open coffin with a terrified yell.

The rough wooden box didn’t have a bottom, it lead straight into a pit dug down through the hay bales and deep into the oreo dirt of the cornfield. Scott hit the bottom of the hole hard despite the relatively soft surface and looked up to see that he was stuck in the bottom of a grave more than fifteen feet deep. The walls showed stripe after stripe of different edible materials, like a layered dessert had replaced the sedimentary layers of the Earth.

The crumbled oreo dirt layer at the top gave way to some kind of white frosting and then another layer of oreo, this one looking firmer, it was probably made of whole cookies. Running down the wall there was a gooey looking liquid mantle of pudding, peanut butter, and mousse, supported by a thin crust of graham cracker and at the bottom of the hole, he was standing on a floor of firm but soft cake of some sort. It had the consistency of gym mats, comfortable to stand on, but with some give.

Scott balanced himself on the solid graham cracker crust, wedging his foot into either side of the narrow grave, but couldn’t find a way to climb up the sides of the pit. Large blobs of pudding, peanut butter and mousse sloughed off in his hands as he clawed at the walls for a handhold. He couldn’t reach the firm oreo crust above his head, it was too high. He tried to jump for it, but caused a mousse slide and splashed to the cake floor in a glob of air fluffed chocolate. It was cold against his skin, like it had just come out of the refrigerator.

A terrible giggling echoed down into his oubliette and the light filtering down from above grew dimmer. Scott cleared the mousse from his face and looked up to see the cover of the casket was sliding back into place.

“No!” He cried up to his unknown tormenters. “No! Wait! Please!”

The giggling grew louder as the bright opening grew smaller and slimmer, leaving Scott to be buried alive. **“DON’T LEAVE ME IN HERE!”**

Scott scrambled to jump for the oreo shelf in desperation as the last glimmer of light faded, but his hand slid right through the chocolate pudding and caused a peanut butter cascade that left him buried to the hip in the thick viscous slop. By the time he had rubbed his face clear of the sticky sludge, he opened his eyes to near perfect darkness with the smallest prickles of light showing through the slats of the casket far above his head.

**“YOU CAN’T JUST LEAVE ME HERE!”**

His only answer was that terrible giggling and the sound of the lid to his grave being firmly hammered into place.

Scott hugged himself in the dark, clothing soaked through with chilled peanut oils and chocolate, _“Please don’t leave me here.”_

* * *

Derek ran hard, staying out in front and trying to lead the others in the right direction. He was the only one who knew where they were going and they couldn’t afford to run in circles while they were being so closely hunted. He burst out of the candy corn into the exact clearing he had been seeking, feeling a flare of pride in himself that he could still navigate his childhood home despite it’s shadowy corruption.

A brightly colored purple door, set into a freestanding green frame sat in the center of the open area, it’s handle glinting invitingly in the false sunlight. They’d made it. Finally something was going right for him tonight. He caught his breath and looked back to share the moment Stiles and Scott, but there was no one there.

Derek’s hands clenched as he cursed violently. He had lost them, all of them, he couldn’t protect even one person. Twelve people had disappeared in the factory tonight and he had no idea if the seven Oompa-Loompa tribe members who had come with him were even still alive. Aside from Erica and Boyd he hadn’t seen them in hours. Nineteen people, lost because of him. That was more than he’d lost to the fire. Derek slammed a fist into the door making it shudder with a loud crunch of the wood. He slumped his forehead against the brightly painted wood in weariness, giving it another tired thump with his fist. What use was it to make it this far, if no one made it with him.

“Oh, don’t give up now, nephew. The night’s events are just about to culminate into their glorious finale.”

Derek stiffened in shock. He turned around slowly and found himself face to face with what had to be a ghost. His uncle Peter had died with the others in the fire. He had lost them all that night, there was no way anyone had survived. Yet, here he was, glaring coldly at Derek with a limp body slung casually over his shoulder. Stiles wasn’t the largest teen around but the ease with which his uncle carried him was unnerving.

“Don’t look so horrified. Is that any way to greet long lost family? Careful now, I might think you’re not glad to see me.”

“You were dead. I mourned you with everyone else. How are you alive?” Derek pressed back against the door to support himself when his knees threatened to give out on him.

“Did you mourn, Derek? Or were you too busy running away?” Peter demanded harshly, his tone dripping with condemnation.

“I was just a kid, Peter, and I’d lost everything and everyone I cared about. I was scared. Is that what you wanted to hear. I was alone in the world and I was terrified, so YES, of course I ran. I ran until I couldn’t run any farther. I ran until I dropped from exhaustion and I almost died because of it. If it hadn’t been for the Oompa-Loompas I would have been eaten right where I fell by a flesh eating hornswoggler.”

“Ah, yes. I took the opportunity to greet your little friends when you first arrived.” There was a rustling in the corn stalks around them as one-by-one the missing Oompa-Loompa tribesmen emerged from the field. They surrounded Derek threateningly. He couldn’t help the hurt look he sent at their leader, Deucalion, who had been so welcoming and kind in Loompa-Land, but the diminutive man stared him down indifferently. “As they say, any friend of yours is a friend of mine.”

Derek’s eyes darted around to all of the Oompa-Loompas, searching for a sympathetic face and receiving only sneers and predatory looks. “Where are Erica and Boyd?”

“Well,” Peter drawled, “Unfortunately not all of your friends wanted to be mine.”

“What did you do?” Derek snarled, not realizing that his teeth grew pointy and his eyes flared brilliant purple in response to his anger.

“They’re out of the way, just like everyone else. I couldn’t have them all running around underfoot and getting into trouble.” A poisonous green light flared in Peter’s eyes, pulled to the surface in counterpoint to Derek’s unconscious use of power. Derek jolted back at the unnatural sight. The tribe started tittering and snickering at his reaction as their eyes all burned acid green as well. They were greatly enjoying his confusion, confident that Peter had matters well in hand.

“What are you?”

“That’s just rude. Surely dearest Talia taught you better manners than that…. or did she not teach you anything at all?” Peter’s acidic eyes sized him up critically and found him wanting, burning into him with disdain. “What do you know about the family secrets, Derek?”

Derek’s glowing purple eyes narrowed in thought, “You mean the recipes and trade secrets?”

Peter barked a laugh, a bitter angry sound that made Derek flinch. “You can’t actually be this stupid. This place, it’s more than a factory- you have to know that much, at least. It’s a place of magic.”

Derek just stared at him dumbly, not getting what Peter was trying to say.

“Surely you didn’t think it was normal how this place bends the rules of reality, or how you always seem to ‘just know’ things you could never possibly know about it’s inner workings? Think, Derek. You haven’t been here since you were a child. How could you still remember all of the passages and hidden byways of the factory? Even in the sections you had never seen before. What about those extra senses that let you know I was here from the very moment you stepped through the doors?”

“I remember Mom used to tell me stories.” Derek started slowly, “About how we were connected to the factory.”

“Oh, so you do remember your heritage. You just chose to ignore it.” Peter snorted scornfully, “Allow me to educate you. As the story goes, one of our ancestors was a Spaniard who sailed with Cortez. He traveled to Mexico with the first conquistadors and saw how the royal court of Montezuma ate the bean of the cacao tree, a completely unknown new food. He was the first outsider who tried the bean paste cakes and later was the first to alter it to suit European tastes by adding sugars from the Caribbean.”

“He grew obsessed with the cacao bean and begged the indigenous Aztec people to teach him everything they knew about the plant and it’s uses. He studied Ixcacao, the goddess of chocolate whom had been absorbed into Aztec culture from the Mayans before them. He even went so far as to take a wife from among the native people and raised his children to worship Ixcacao.”

“Over the generations following that first contact, the Spanish forces conquered most of Mexico and what is now the western United States and then warred for their own independence from Spain. In some form or another through the centuries our family survived it all, traveling north to settle in what they knew as New Spain and then surviving the Conquest of Alta California by the United States. Ixcacao is a goddess who banishes hunger and provides safety for her people and our family continued it’s worship of her as she provided for our ancestors, conquerors and conquered alike. As a matriarchal family, all we had to do to blend into history was marry into a carefully chosen new name every few generations. When our family arrived here in Beacon Hills, they chose the perfect location, finding a place of great power where many telluric currents intersected. It was the proud descendants of great conquerors and Aztec architects that built this castle and the leylines it was built upon that then filled it with power.”

“Our family’s power is based in Aztec magics. The magics of sacrifice. The Aztecs believed that the continual self-sacrifice of both gods and humans was required to preserve and continue their way of life. Once every year the empire sacrificed a chosen one to quench the sun’s thirst and renew it’s energy to continue it’s endless travels.” Peter’s words took on a mocking tone. “The factory obviously doesn’t need as much power as the sun, but the concept is the same. A human conduit; someone willing to stick their finger in the giant wall socket of magical energy that wells up under the factory and feed it into the factory. A castle after all, always needs a King.”

“Your father was the last conduit. He was the spirit of the factory and your mother was his chocolatier. It’s a partnership after all, the conduit cannot leave the castle grounds and so someone else must be the face of the Hale brand to the public. When they died it passed forcefully to me.”

“I never wanted this power, especially not like this. I wanted to be free of this family and it’s curse. I have no interest in a long dead religion that was so foolish that they believed the sun could get tired and needed human blood to quench its thirst. What the hell do I care about the ‘joys’ of children’s sweets? I wanted to make something of myself. To shake the stink of sugar off of my boots and explore the horizons.”

Peter’s eyes grew hazy and distant, “I was burning, I could feel myself slipping into death, but this damned castle wouldn’t let me go. You ran away and so the Factory took what it could and forced me to stay. I’ve been chained to this rotting husk of a place for years because of you, Derek. Completely alone. Shouldering your responsibilities while you stole my dream of exploring new places. I dragged the Factory back from the brink, I slaved over its repairs and I returned it to it’s glory. Only now, after all the work is done, have you returned. Only after I sent out an engraved invitation to every corner of this godforsaken world.”

Derek was reeling with new information, but that same gut feeling that he had been trusting since he came home rang with the truth of Peter’s words. “What do you want from me?”

“You?” Peter scoffed, hefting Stiles higher on his shoulder, “Whoever said this was about you?”

Derek’s eyes darted to Stiles’ unconscious form in concern.

“I gave up on you years ago. I waited for you to return, to take your place, but you never did. So, I came up with a new plan. I sent out my Golden Tickets all around the world to find a successor. To find someone the Candy Castle would accept as my replacement.” Peter patted Stiles with careless disregard, “He’s not a Hale so the power may just burn right through him, but I don’t particularly care. He’s compatible enough that I can get off the property before that happens. Once I’m out, the Factory won’t be able to reach me, you proved that, and then I’ll be free. It doesn’t matter what happens to the Castle or it’s power after that. Let the whole thing burn for all I care. That’s what was supposed to happen in the first place.”

“What?” Derek couldn’t be hearing this. Peter had been his favorite uncle as a child and he had always seemed to be in good humor. Where had all of this poisonous anger come from?

“That’s right, Derek. I planned the fire. The family magics prevented me from doing it myself, but I dropped the perfect words into just the right ears. Kate Argent was desperate to prove herself a better successor to the Argent’s Silver Sweet fortune than her older brother. She would have done anything to please her father and what better way than to eliminate his biggest competitor? I told her how to get into the factory and exactly where a fire might do the most damage. Not directly of course, she’d never have believed me if she knew I was a Hale, but I made sure the right people spoke freely where she couldn’t help but overhear.”

“Kate Argent?”

“The very same woman you were ignorantly guiding around just hours ago killed everyone you love. Isn’t it sickening, just how little you know about your own history? You had no idea how our family lived or how they died. Talia would be ashamed of you, Derek.”

Peter adjusted Stiles’ limp body once more, and ordered the Oompa-Loompas, “Bring him.”

Five small bodies piled onto Derek, the twins grabbed him around the knees, Ennis and Kali each took an arm and Deucalion climbed up his back and rode his shoulders down as he toppled over due to the extra weight and strength they shouldn’t have had. He grunted as they brought him to the ground and pinned him there.

“What do you think, Derek? They were so very pleased with the power boost they got from swearing obedience to me. Vicious little things you’ve found. I quite like them.”

He stepped over Derek’s prone form and opened the purple door to the boiler room. Derek could hear the mechanical heart of the factory pumping and steaming and cranking away, but it seemed sick. Some part of him knew that the Factory could never run properly with a conduit that hated it. At its center, the Factory was run on love and the joy his family had always taken in their jobs. The shadow that hung over the Candy Castle like a sickness was Peter’s refusal to accept his proper place. He was rejecting the Factory and it had grown sick with the corrupted power he was feeding into it.

“PETER!” Derek called after him as he walked away with Stiles. “Don’t do this! Let him go!” He thrashed against the Oompa-Loompas, but his vision went hazy as he was cracked over the head and their strength held fast as they dragged him into the center of the Castle.

The purple door closed and the sounds of the Factory’s heartbeat were cut off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want more up to date information about what I'm up to, or if you want to message me, I just set up a [Facebook page](https://www.facebook.com/Lightningskies) or you can always visit me on [my Tumblr](https://monitorzombie.tumblr.com)


	6. Only Stiles Left

When Kate finally found the center of the Castle she was surprised to find that someone had beaten her there. A giant copper boiler dominated one side of the room and on the opposite wall a series of pipes descended from the ceiling and churned out a stream of steaming hot chocolate into a large golden basin that was constantly overflowing into a series of troughs that disappeared under the wall. A handsome man who hadn’t been a part of the tour was laying the Stilinski kid’s unconscious body out on a raised stone slab in the center of the room.

Derek Hale was off to the side, being held down by a pack of tiny people with fangs, claws and green glowing eyes. Kate drew her gun, something wasn’t right here, it was like a scene out of a horror movie and didn’t feel like it was just a bit of Halloween themed showmanship.

“Ah, Kate. I’m so glad you could make it. Your timing is impeccable… pity it wasn’t always.” The unknown man spoke without even turning around, preferring to fuss over the perfect arrangement of the kid’s limp limbs. She didn’t see how it would matter, the skinny twig was all elbow anyway.

Kate started edging around the perimeter of the room, on high alert. “Who are you?”

“I’m the only reason you ever got this far, both tonight and a similar night so many years ago.” He finally turned around and pierced her with inhuman glowing green eyes. “Allow me to finally introduce myself, I am Peter Hale.”

Kate flinched back from those eyes and that name, aiming her gun right between his eyes. “Impossible, the Hales are dead.”

“Yes, they are… and I have you to thank for that, but as I was saying, you had terrible timing. You acted much sooner than I had anticipated. I was supposed to be leaving for school a mere week after you attacked, and had you waited for a better opportunity rather than rushing in, I would have been nowhere near the tragic fire. As it was, you didn’t manage to destroy the factory and you trapped me here indefinitely. I was very… displeased with the way events played out.” He sighed in a dramatic, put upon fashion. “But, you know what they say, if you want something done right…”

There was a slithering sound behind her and Kate spun around, getting off a single shot that pinged off of the pipe creeping up behind her before it coiled around her feet and knocked her off balance. The pipe continued wrapping around her legs, like a giant serpent, it lifted her off the ground and was joined by several more pipes that snaked down to curl around her arms suspending her from one of the boiler’s huge cast iron ducts. She was completely immobilized as he approached her, only able to thrash her head back and forth in futility.

“Peter don’t.” Derek called.

“The ancient Aztecs believed that their gods needed to be nourished by the flesh and blood of their human worshipers. They would chose a sacrifice from among the people and pamper and revere them for a year. They were given the best foods and most luxurious clothing and were admired by the masses. Tell me, Kate, have you enjoyed your years of respect and the sweet superiority of your family name? The time has come for you to pay the price for the gifts you have received.”

Kate’s refusal was muffled by a loop of hose that tightened around her mouth, acting as a rather effective gag.

“The ritual involved bloodletting, where they would cut themselves and let their gods drink of their blood.” Peter pulled out an ancient looking golden goblet and obsidian ritual knife. He sliced deep into his palm, allowing a generous portion of blood to splash into the cup. Derek thrashed and gave an angry roar as he cut a similar wound into Stiles’ hand and collected the teen’s blood as well. The pain began to rouse the teen with a groan. Peter topped up the cup with boiling chocolate from the head of the river and brought it before Kate.

“The goddess Ixcacao felt compassion for the fears of those who were destined for sacrifice and she walked with them to their deaths, feeding them goblets of chocolate and comforting them with her presence.”

The hose forced Kate’s mouth open as Peter poured half the mixture of blood and boiling hot chocolate down her throat making her choke and splutter in pain and disgust as she spit out what she could. A hose looped around her neck manipulated her throat until she was forced to awkwardly swallow the rest of the burning liquid.

Peter ignored her distressed wheezing from accidentally inhaling some of the mixture and quickly cut her hand to top up the goblet with her blood. He held the still steaming goblet over Stiles’ face and allowed several drips to fall across his forehead.

“Peter!” Derek snarled, his eyes burning bright purple and his mouth full of fangs as rage consumed him. **“LEAVE HIM ALONE!”**

At the sound of Derek’s voice, Stiles’ eyes snapped open, but there was a green sheen obscuring his blank gaze and he made no indication that he had even noticed the burning liquid splashed on his face and running down his temples. Peter smirked down at him with his own smug green eyes.

He opened the door to the coal burning assembly at the base of the huge copper boiler. There was a hiss as he poured the rest of the blood and chocolate mixture over the hot coals at the heart of the factory. The bitter smell of burning sugar and sickly sweet scent of cooking blood flooded the room.

“You won’t enjoy this next part.” He spoke casually as he placed the tip of the obsidian blade over Kate’s heart. “Because after the bloodletting, they would ritually cut the living heart out of their sacrifice.”

Kate’s eyes went wide and she thrashed against her restraints but couldn’t get away as Peter dug the knife down through layers of skin and sinew and muscle. He cracked open her ribs and cut a large hole in her chest, reaching in and gently removing her heart to hold it up in front of her still lucid eyes. The moment the organ was out of her chest a mass of little plastic tubes unwound from the end of the large pipe holding her and dug in to seal off her arteries and veins, the clear plastic slowly filling with blood as it was sucked away.

Still, she wasn’t dead. Her heart continued beating in Peter’s hands, completely separate from her body. She stared at it in horrified disbelief but could do nothing but watch as Peter dipped it in the chocolate river, making her seize in agony as she felt the flesh of her heart cooking in the heat. Peter went to stand over Stiles, raising the knife and heart in a gesture of supplication.

Derek snarled inarticulately and bucked wildly, he got one arm free for a moment, but Ennis bashed him over the head again and he slumped to the floor. “Stiles! Wake up!”

Peter brought the knife and heart together and shaved off a sliver. Kate began screaming, drowning out Derek’s increasingly distressed cries. Peter stared down into Stiles’ eyes, both of them glowing with green power as he fed the flesh into the teen’s mouth and he mindlessly chewed and swallowed. With each bite, the glow in Peter’s eyes dimmed and Stiles’ grew brighter. Once Stiles’ lips were shiny with blood and roughly half of the heart was eaten Stiles’ eyes had become brighter than Peter’s and he threw the remains on the boiler’s coals to burn.

Derek could feel something change in the atmosphere of the Factory around him and the arms holding him grew weaker. With a snarl he tore out of their grasp, scattering the traitorous Oompa-Loompas everywhere, sending their small bodies rolling across the room. He bolted for Stiles’ prone body, gathering him into his arms and wiping the blood from his face gently. “Stiles? Stiles please wake up.”

Kate’s shrieking reached a new height of desperation as her heart burned, but still she didn’t die. Finally, her heart had burned away to ash and the pain turned cold in her chest. Nothing was left but the slow drain of her blood. She sagged in her restraints with tears streaming down her face.

“You didn’t think it would be that easy did you? The Aztec used every part of their sacrifices and unfortunately for you, a magical Halloween Factory always has need for more blood.” Peter patted her cheek in a patronizing manner as the pipes and hoses hauled her away into the darkness at the edges of the room. She started screaming again as she disappeared behind a mass of ducts and vents.

“Was that entirely necessary?” Stiles asked, as he swung his legs off of the dias and stepped out of Derek’s grasp. His voice echoed with the splash of chocolate and the groan and tick of the boiler room around them. He was now tied into the Factory’s every inch, breathing with it’s power.

“Necessary? No, but it was fun. I almost wish I actually believed in the Aztec ways, they were beautifully theatrical.”

With a flare of power Peter was blasted back, putting a deep dent in the side of a large pipe.

“You should put more faith in your family’s magic.” Stiles intoned, his eyes glowing so brilliantly green that they obscured his face like a pair of supernovas. “I can feel it swelling within me as your corruption washes away.”

The Oompa-Loompas scurried to help Peter get up, their little hands shoving and pulling him upright as they hid behind him. Peter wiped the blood away from under his nose and sneered, “I hope it pops you like an overfull tick. That kind of power is too much for you.”

“No, it was too much for you.” Stiles seemed to glide forward as Derek fell into step behind him and they advanced on Peter, the very ground under their feet rising up to meet them. “I have something you never had, I have a Chocolatier.”

Peter laughed cruelly, “Oh that’s rich. You think he’s going to be any use. He’s a coward who ran at the first sign of trouble.”

“He also returned at the first sign of trouble.” Stiles countered calmly, the power continuing to flow off him in waves, a shimmery green veil of magic haloed around him, sparking purple where it touched Derek. “The moment he stepped foot back in the Factory he accepted his birthright. Look at his eyes.”

They both looked down at Derek’s wide, confused, but steadily glowing purple eyes. He stared back in bewilderment as he warily backed Stiles up. Peter had always known more of the family secrets than Derek did. He was completely lost as to what was going on, but he was aware of Stiles now in the back of his mind where he had been sensing the darkness of Peter hunting them. Stiles felt warm and comforting, his aura welcoming and inviting in a complete counterpoint to how Peter had made him feel since he’d arrived at the Castle, sharp and cold and malicious. “He accepted his role, but he didn’t accept YOU.”

Derek straightened up and moved to stand shoulder to shoulder with Stiles. It felt right to stand united. Something settled in Derek and it felt like he had come home. His senses settled into every corner of the factory and he could sense Stiles’ mind beside him. Derek’s eyes flared even brighter as he began to emit a powerful purple aura equal to Stiles’. Peter’s eyes flickered a weak, ill looking green as he glanced between the two of them in mounting fear.

“Stand away from him.” Stiles commanded and the Oompa-Loompas stiffened, their little bodies moving robotically as they obeyed the command with ill grace. “You chose to tie yourselves to the Factory. You even swore your obedience. Peter is no longer the spirit of the Factory. Now, I am in charge, and you will do everything I say. Perhaps someday you will be able to redeem yourselves.” 

The feral little Oompa-Loompas snarled at him in anger, but their eyes burned green with his power and they could do nothing, trapped by their very own trickery. Erica and Boyd had sworn loyalty but not obedience and would be fine.

Stiles turned his burning eyes back to Peter, “In all your research, did you never pay attention to the power of Aztec curses?”

The deposed spirit looked around desperately for escape, but they were deep in the center of the Candy Castle, and everything would obey Stiles merest whim. He wasn’t counting on the teen resonating with Derek so smoothly and taking control so easily. As if on command the rows of corn behind Peter shuffled forward and wove tightly together to form a thatched barrier preventing his escape.

“You have your freedom, Peter. I sever your connection to the Castle. But as punishment for turning on your faith and your family, from this day forth, no food will satisfy you, no drink will quench your thirst. Your desperate wants and needs and dreams will never be met and you will never again have a place to call home. You will suffer until the day that you return here and beg your family to allow you to complete your duty. On that day, you will be bound to the Castle forever and will never step foot outside again.”

Peter gasped as the last bit of green faded from his eyes. He doubled over in pain as a single emerald tear trailed down his cheek and splashed into the oreo dirt, making it hiss and melt away in a small plume of purple smoke.

Peter threw his head back and screamed as Stiles’ whole body glowed. He reached out and grasped Derek’s hand, joining the power of the Castle to a true Chocolatier for the first time in a decade. A blast of purifying power flowed through them spreading out through the castle.

Their powerful aura swept out through the castle, changing everything as it passed. Dirty cobwebs began to glisten with magic, pieces of the castle’s machinery reassembled and chugged to life, broken windows regrew, and the castle shook off 10 years of disuse and abandonment. The malicious and forbidding atmosphere lifted to make way for a giddy feeling that whispered and giggled around them, making Derek feel lighthearted and carefree.

He grinned at Stiles and got a huge smile in return as their magic spread out to every corner of the castle.

At the touch of their power, Allison’s skin lightened to a creamy marzipan, all the blemishes smoothing over as her hair lightened to a bright nut brown. She gasped and sat up, exhaling a fragrant cloud of roasted almond scented air.

 **“Hello?”** A voice called from nearby.

“Scott?” Allison carefully pried the cover off of the wooden casket next to her with strong polished nutshell fingernails and looked down at where Scott was buried to his hips in some kind of pudding mix. “Hang on! I’ll pull you up.”

Allison broke off a strong corn stalk and lowered it down to Scott, he slipped a few times against the slippery walls, but eventually heaved himself over the edge of the wooden casket. They tumbled to the ground and Scott landed on top of her, nose to nose.

They both blushed. Allison stared up into Scott’s eyes shyly, but her eyes widened as his nose twitched and he leaned down to sniff deeply at her neck.

“You…. You smell…. really good.”

With his face in her neck Allison got a mouth full of his surprisingly sharp hair, but as she tried to spit it out, the taste sank in and instead she nipped off a bit. “Your hair is peanut brittle.”

Scott sat up and stared at her. “What the hell?”

A large sugar floss cocoon thrashed in the Webbing Room as the Castle’s magic flowed over it. Candy red fingernails ripped through the thick wrapping of sugar as Lydia dug her way out, combing bits of webbing from her thick strawberry liquorice hair.

Her pink hand paused and brought a lock up to her eyes to inspect it closer and she caught a glance of her nails. Cautiously she licked her thumbnail and snorted. “Brings new meaning to ‘strawberry blonde’.”

A large pink spider scuttled out of the webbing and chittered at her, waving it’s legs in agitation.

“I don’t know what happened, Mom, maybe Stiles’ theories of the Castle actually having magic are true.”

Melissa smoothed a curl of toasted coconut off of Isaac’s pale forehead as he shifted and mumbled. She wasn’t sure what had happened and the kids were still unconscious. One moment they were all locked up with heavy hard candy chains and then a strange tingling charge had passed over them and all the chains had dissolved. Her skin had hardened and her clothing transformed into a purple and green candy-striper outfit.

Isaac had shrunk and Erica and Boyd had grown, evening out the three to a height about halfway between Oompa-Loompa and human. They were each about four feet tall now and had taken on individual food characteristics of their own. Erica’s skin had paled and taken on a yellow tint, her hair brightening to long curly strands of lemon peel, Isaac had an unruly head of toasted shredded coconut and Boyd looked exactly the same as he had before but a strong scent of coffee now emanated from him.

The tingle of magic immediately woke the Sheriff in alarm. He reached for a gun that wasn’t there as his gaze darted around for the giant gummy snake that had attacked him. He lurched upright, his arms and legs feeling strangely rubbery. When he looked down he saw that his arms were shiny and hairless and a strange golden caramel color.

He was distracted from his inspection when he heard a moan behind him and he turned to see what looked like a fruit roll-up mummy lurch upright in the abandoned nest.

“I will sue all of you for this!” Slurred Mr. Whittemore in agitation, obviously still half out of it.

The Sheriff pressed his soft fingers into his rubbery arm and watched them glom together and ooze into one seamless piece. He slowly pulled his sticky limbs apart again, carefully separating his fingers and then glanced at the lawyer who seemed to be completely made out of red fruit tape.

The Sheriff snorted. “Red tape. Cute. How do I just KNOW that Stiles had something to do with this.”

Mr. Lahey’s faintly glowing green ghost formed over his bloody body deep in the tunnels of the factory. His eyes were dull and he stared off into the distance and floated listlessly through a nearby wall, trailing lime ectoplasm behind him.

The chocolate kanima created by Peter’s power blinked it’s secondary eyelids, hissed at the approaching magic and dove deep into the chocolate lake to avoid its unwanted touch. The creature was far enough from the heart of the Castle that it kept its reptilian form, but its eyes glowed green as it was tied into the magic of the Factory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want more up to date information about what I'm up to, or if you want to message me, I just set up a [Facebook page](https://www.facebook.com/Lightningskies) or you can always visit me on [my Tumblr](https://monitorzombie.tumblr.com)


	7. Epilogue

Allison was walking through the Great Hall with her bow and a quiver full of sharpened candy canes when Lydia called out to her. She stopped to let the redheaded liquorice queen catch up to her, admiring today’s spider silk blouse. Lydia and her mother had revolutionized survival gear with the material, it was tough and weather resistant, but could be consumed in an emergency. Under Lydia’s guidance, Hale’s was expanding out into other markets.

“Have you seen Derek or Stiles this morning?”

“No, I was in the anterior third tower’s sub-basement hunting some of the creatures down there. I found a den of bearies. I was going to bring this to the boys to see what they could do with it.” She gestured at the large berry-blue bear she was dragging behind her. She had gained a lot of strength and stamina with her transformation, Scott was the only one who could even hope to match her these days.

“That’s a new species.” Lydia tapped on her tablet to take notes on the discovery. She turned and pressed a brick in the wall that looked to the untrained eye to be the same as every other brick and a section of the wall sank into the floor. “They must be in the Inventing Room. Walk with me and tell me about it.”

“Well, after the stalactites that dripped gum drops and the colony of cinnamon fire ants, I figured there were probably more species down there. I think there’s an entire ecosystem that we’re just scratching the surface of.”

“We’ll have to carefully organize an expedition. If any of these new species prove to be a good seller or ingredient we don’t want to go in and destroy their natural habitat.”

They walked through the orchard and Allison blushed at the energetic wave Scott gave them from where he was tilling the mellowcreme pumpkin patch.

“You’ve got it bad.” Lydia remarked, still typing on her tablet. She hadn’t even needed to look up to know Scott was making a lovesick spectacle of himself. “Everyone’s noticed how often you two try to eat each other’s faces.”

“No, I just- I like peanuts.”

“Mm-hmm. Well, you clearly like HIS nuts in particular.”

Allison’s pale marzipan skin blushed almost as deep as Lydia’s liquorice skin and her voice went a little strangled, “LYDIA!”

“At least you’re getting some. I’m too busy running this company for those two idiots to find a romantic partner for myself,” The redhead looked up from her tablet, “Not to mention how badly the ‘my underwear isn’t the only thing that’s edible’ thing goes over with one night stands.”

“You’ll find someone.” Allison assured, “We’d never let you be alone. If you ever truly want someone, Stiles would send out Golden Tickets in a heartbeat to find you a man who can handle all this.”

The girls smiled brightly at each other over the thought of how much Stiles adored Lydia. He may be the all-powerful spirit of the Factory, but Lydia was the brains behind it all. She did all of the hard work in the real world while Stiles and Derek provided the magic.

They stepped into the Inventing Room together and Allison looked for a reasonably clean surface to leave her catch. The Inventing Room had looked better when it had been abandoned for a decade. Derek and Stiles were a disaster prone team with a short attention span. Something left to boil for too long on the main workbench had reduced down to thick toxic sludge, open containers everywhere were overflowing with fuzzy candy mold, something in the corner that had started as an attempt at cranberry fudge had started to separate and looked like it was bleeding and all the flavored syrups had fermented into liqueurs. Allison whistled in admiration when she spotted the giant swedish fish laid out on a nearby workbench. “That must be 50 pounds.”

Derek looked up from where he had been arguing with Stiles over a writhing mixture of gummy worms bubbling away in a large vat. “Stiles’ Dad has been fishing in the underground lake again. He is determined to catch the Kanima so that Stiles can fix him.”

“My studies show that the Kanima’s paralytic venom mixes into the chocolate river as he swims and it numbs the mouth just enough that it takes longer for the chocolate to melt.” Lydia informed him, “The new chocolate blend has done very well with focus groups and I would like to continue to sell it. Without the Kanima we’d just have normal chocolate and it is unacceptable for any of our products to be so plebian. We have a responsibility to provide an unparallelled experience with every bite.”

Derek looked at her with amusement in his glowing purple eyes, “I know the company motto, Lydia, but the man’s used to being a county sheriff. Being reduced to Head of Security in a magically secure factory is the next best thing to retiring for him. He needed a hobby. Stiles thinks fishing is a nice relaxing pastime and wants to mount it for him.”

Stiles looked up at the sound of his name, he was wearing elaborate telescoping goggles that magnified his brilliant green eyes to a ridiculous size. Derek had made them when he was a child. The Hale’s were raised learning to create and maintain the machines of the factory before they learned to make the candies. Derek had a knack for machinery and engineering. 

Stiles could see better than perfectly with the magic of the factory running through him, but the second he found out that the goggles were Derek’s last invention before his family died, he insisted that he couldn’t conduct any ‘mad scientist cookery’ without them. Derek always adopted a stupidly fond look whenever Stiles started ranting about their importance or misplaced them and bullied his Chocolatier into helping him find them.

“Lydia. There you are! Tell Derek that not everything should be grape flavored. His neanderthal palate is stunting my genius.”

Lydia responded in a bored tone without looking up from her tablet, “Derek this is a chocolate factory, and you are heir to a world famous chocolate legacy, at least some of our products need to be made from something other than fruit flavors.”

“HAH!” Stiles crowed, “Told you!”

“However, Allison just found a bluebeary, so for the foreseeable future I want you two working on a line of berry candies.”

“Whoa. Look at that beast. Where’d you dig it up?” Stiles poked at the dead bear and it oozed some fruity juice onto his hand. He licked it off curiously, smacking his tongue as he considered the taste and then scooped up more and stuck his fingers in Derek’s mouth. “What do you think?”

The girls vacated quickly, in a well practiced exit as Derek’s pink tongue dipped and laved over Stiles fingers slowly and heated purple eyes stared intently into bright green. Stiles couldn’t tear his eyes away from where that soft warm mouth was sucking on his fingertips. He whined pitifully as Derek pulled away to speak.

“I think we’ll need a juicer. I’ll have to study up on all the most effective ways to pump the juice out of something.” Stiles started breathing harder at his purred words. “Would you like to help me with that Stiles? I’d need to try several different methods so that I can be sure I've managed to drain every tasty drop.”

Stiles’s gaping lips were mouthing nothing but vowel noises. Derek tugged his factory spirit into his arms and whispered into his ear. “Have you ever heard of milking?”

Stiles thumped his head into Derek’s chest and groaned. “I’m SO glad we accidentally got magical candy factory hitched, even IF our lives and friends are super weird now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want more up to date information about what I'm up to, or if you want to message me, I just set up a [Facebook page](https://www.facebook.com/Lightningskies) or you can always visit me on [my Tumblr](https://monitorzombie.tumblr.com)


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